


ozymandias

by Stacicity



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Bizarre relationship dynamics, Elias Being Elias, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Oral Sex, Recovery, Recreational Drug Use, and also hurt/no comfort because it's these two, gratuitous descriptions of Elias' personal possessions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:53:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23925679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stacicity/pseuds/Stacicity
Summary: Jon flees to Scotland, and Elias visits Moorland House to reclaim what is his - or what is left of it.***In which Peter Lukas does not die, and is forced to consider his role in the end of all things.
Relationships: Barnabas Bennett/Jonah Magnus, Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas, Jonah Magnus/Robert Smirke, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Mordechai Lukas/Jonah Magnus
Comments: 239
Kudos: 298





	1. Chapter 1

After the events of the Panopticon, Jon and Martin flee to Scotland. Elias watches them go, back in the refuge of his office, steepled fingers pressed to his lips as he watches Martin shudder at the crush of people on the tube, the crowds at Euston, still crackling and buzzing with the static of the Lonely. It leeches off him, an aura of blank, freezing air that clears them a path, people stepping out of their way without quite knowing why they’re doing it. Jon barely seems to notice. His hand is in Martin’s, and he drifts close to his side like a satellite.

Elias lets them go. It’s entirely apparent that at this point there’ll be no keeping Jon calm enough for a civil discussion, and he isn’t keen to engender an altercation. Jon is powerful. Not as powerful as he will be, but worth being wary of regardless, so he’ll give them their space. His Archivist needs rest, and Elias needs to plan his next move. 

Three Hunters and a creature of the Stranger roaming his Archives hardly make for a peaceful working environment, and Elias settles himself in to watch the show, the Hunters chasing one another out into the darkness, the Not-Them disappearing into the maze of the tunnels. It’s unlikely to find its way out of there, much as it might try, and it is not a creature of wayfinding and certainty, so it may well die down there, after a time. The Distortion would have more luck, perhaps, and it’s possible it may even choose to show the Not-Them the way if it thinks it appropriately disruptive, but it’s busy opening a door for the Detective and guiding her to safety. 

Curious, that it takes such an interest. It’s aggravating to have something twisting impossible doors into his geometric masterpiece, but only a passing concern. Everything is in motion, now, and Elias isn’t inclined to bother himself with the petty irritations caused by other Entities. All that matters, now, is Jon. 

But he has to keep himself busy somehow. 

* * * 

Peter’s superficial geniality is not a family trait, more’s the pity. Nathaniel Lukas grants him entry to Moorland House - if he hadn’t then even Elias might have had trouble finding it - but he doesn’t greet him at the door. Elias’ shoes click against marble floors, the whisper of his fingertips against a banister like a rasp of sandpaper in the dead quiet of the room. 

The strangest thing is that Elias knows that this house is _full_ of people. The Lukas family is not small, is _never_ small, and there will be cousins and aunts and siblings packed into this place, cooks and maids and attendants moving with silent steps between rooms, ducking between bookshelves and through hidden doors. Elias could walk the main corridors of Moorland House and never see another soul, and have passed twenty. There are ante-chambers and passageways and boltholes threading the house like arteries. Elias would have teased Peter about the archetypal lair of a secret villain, but he knows that the house has been this way since long before that was a cliché. 

Nathaniel’s office is set in the East Wing, and Elias knows the way well. He is not invited. But the mists cleared in front of the estate when he approached it and there is no foreboding buzz of static in his teeth, so perhaps he is _expected_. Elias looks at the door of the office and wonders what Nathaniel is doing in there - waiting for him? Pacing, perhaps. Is he angry, is he calm? Is he alone? It’s refreshing, in a way, not to know. The mists that blanket Moorland House cloud Elias’ sight, reduce him to the narrow focus of the eyes in his skull, one viewpoint, one perspective. He refuses to react to the discomfort of it, and knocks gently on the office door. 

It swings open on oiled hinges, a gentle and arcing glide through the air. Elias feels the absurd, petty urge to slam it closed and shatter the silence. Even he is not immune to childishness sometimes, and this has the potential to be a difficult conversation. 

There is a large oaken desk in the office, and the man behind it looks up from his work to regard him with ice-blue eyes. Peter’s eyes, Mordechai’s eyes. He has a sharper, foxlike set to his face, none of Peter’s sea-blown amiability, those deceptively innocent smiles of his. Nathaniel looks precisely as intimidating as he is, steel-cored and steel-haired, back rigidly straight despite his age. Surely he must feel the creaking of his spine, by now. Elias certainly had, at that age. 

“Mr Bouchard,” he greets after a short pause. _Mr Bouchard_ today, then, which means business, and is expected too. Nathaniel is not immune to familiarity, has known him as James and as Elias, can be induced towards civility rather than frostiness from time to time. But these are not glad circumstances for his family, and Elias can understand his predisposition towards coldness. 

Still, he’s not going to call him _Mr Lukas_. He knows too many of them, that would be absurd. “Nathaniel,” he replies, pitching his voice barely above a murmur and sitting down when Nathaniel waves a hand to the chair in front of his desk. Manners, always manners. The Lukases can be graceless and indecorous but they are rarely discourteous. Mordechai’s influence, Elias suspects, even now. He’d always set a lot of store by manners. “How are you?” 

“Well enough,” Nathaniel mutters, setting his pen down and fixing Elias with another long stare. In another life, he’d have been a good Watcher, perhaps. He’s always had a keen eye for detail. “Are you here to discuss the funeral?” 

Elias takes a moment to let those words percolate, sinking bone-deep, letting them settle onto his shoulders. He does not let his expression flicker. “He’s dead, then?” It’s - unfortunate. Not unexpected, not as such, but Peter is slippery when he likes to be and he has had more miraculous escapes in the past. He had - not hoped, he won’t allow himself that, but he had considered it _feasible_ that Peter might still be alive. 

“As good as,” Nathaniel replies grimly. “Whatever your Archivist did to him, it’s left him useless to us now.” 

“I see,” Elias replies, wondering if he can side-step the question of blame. The Lukases will hold him responsible for Jon’s actions, that is not a surprise, and he is willing to bear what consequences he must for the sake of diplomatic relationships. There is a chance, after all, that things will not work as he has planned. He cannot start burning bridges now, much as he might like to, not if he might have to start over again with a brand new Archivist in a few months. “Is he here?” 

Nathaniel’s lips quirk into something almost like a smile and he shrugs. “Not really. Not in a state where you might find him, anyway.” 

Lukases. Either they’re distractingly blunt or they talk around an issue for hours without ever finding the right words to _pin_ it. Elias draws on his patience. “Last time I had cause to consider somebody within the Forsaken, I was retrieving the bones of an acquaintance,” he says, keeping things as delicate as he can manage. “Is that the state in which I might find him?” 

“No. Not _yet_.” 

Which - Elias is quite sure - is not a comment on decomposition rates. It means that Peter is, for now, alive. Breathing, anyway. The knowledge hits him with surprising sharpness, and he finds to his irritation that he is rubbing his thumb along the spot on his left hand where a ring sometimes sits. He stops, folds his hands neatly on his lap and clamps them still. 

“This is the second time an Archivist of yours has caused such disruption,” Nathaniel says, reaching into the top drawer of his desk and withdrawing a pack of cigarettes. He offers one to Elias who shakes his head, drawing out a silver cigarette case from his coat pocket. It’s embossed at the corner, _ANL_ , and Nathaniel eyes it with brief distaste. “In recognition of your long-standing relationship with the family,” and he directs the comment at the cigarette case more than Elias, “there is an expectation of certain lenience. But this is getting to be tiresome.” 

“I quite understand,” Elias replies, because there is little else he can say to that. Quite aside from the financial consequences for the Institute, he has no particular excuses to offer for why the Lukas family might feel so slighted by him. In their position, he would feel much the same. It is the inevitable consequence of such conflicting Entities - no matter how cordially they might conduct themselves, there _will_ be clashes. The best they can do is to try and navigate them with tact. 

Which, granted, he is not doing especially well. The cigarette case is a pointed reminder, and perhaps an unnecessary one. Nathaniel is well aware of Elias’ history without him bringing Aloysius Lukas’ heirlooms along with him. But even he is not immune to sentiment. A good many of the keepsakes he’s accumulated over the years have belonged to one Lukas or another, some gifted platonically, some not. Elias has worked hard to forge the connections, he feels proud of what he has achieved with such a taciturn group of individuals who have no reason to bear him any goodwill bar loyalty and tradition. He is fortunate, then, that most Lukases set such store by tradition. But Nathaniel has always been sharp. Perhaps he feels that Elias’ goodwill is not worth the difficulty it brings them. Perhaps he simply feels that, as Aloysius’ eldest son, he ought to have received more heirlooms. 

Lukases are generous with their assets, just not with one another. Inheritances and bequeathments to individuals are rare. The money, the investments, the estate - the whole of it belongs to the family. Nathaniel might have good reason to feel slighted. Elias doesn’t let himself linger for too long on the thought, lighting a cigarette and crossing the room to stand by the window next to Nathaniel, watching mist coil across the damp grass, the dark line of the woodland beyond. This estate has scarcely changed in all the time that Elias has known it. A perfect little bubble of history. 

“Archivists are - by their nature - unpredictable. I did _not_ expect for Peter to suffer personally as a result of this wager,” Elias starts, drawing in a lungful of smoke, pauses when Nathaniel lifts a hand.

“I am not inclined to discuss my nephew’s personal circumstances,” he says sharply, and Elias lifts one shoulder in a little shrug, murmurs a brief apology, waits for Nathaniel to speak again. “It sets a dangerous precedent. Bad enough that our first attempt at a Ritual was derailed, bad enough that you coaxed my nephew into personal entanglements, you may also have compromised his loyalty to our patron. It cannot be seen to stand.” 

Elias stifles a sigh, lets his breath out slowly in a stream of smoke out of the window, watches it drop heavily against the mist. “What would you have me do? I cannot undo what has already been done.”

“A sacrifice is traditional,” Nathaniel replies, and Elias closes his eyes briefly. A bridge too far, even for him. 

“We have no shortage of wayward strays through the Institute’s doors-” he begins, knowing already that he’s going to be stopped, trying regardless. Sometimes all that one can do is try. 

“The Archivist, Mr Bouchard.” 

“I’m afraid that that simply won’t be possible.” 

“ _Elias_.” Nathaniel does snap, then, flicking the rest of his cigarette out of the window and turning to him with irritation writ large over his features. “I should have thought that you would have more appreciation for our mutual-”

“Nathaniel, this is not within my gift to give,” Elias sighs, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “The Archivist confronted Peter and walked away the victor. He is - nascent, yes, but emerging.” 

“Had my nephew been more loyal-”

“I really don’t think that his loyalty was the issue,” Elias replies, still looking out of the window. He can’t be sure of that. Whatever might have occurred within the Forsaken is beyond his reach to See. He is feeling in the dark for answers that Nathaniel does not want to give him, and there are too many unanswered questions waiting to trip him. Nonetheless, he cannot hand Jon over, would not even if he could. If he were so inclined, he could coax Jon back to the Institute. Once there, yes, if Nathaniel felt inclined towards a show of brute force, perhaps he might draw Jon into the Lonely. But he has walked out once before. 

That, at least, is the argument that Elias will pose should he need to. The fact that Peter left a way open for him is between the two of them, and it doesn’t suit Elias to share this information, so he won’t. Better that Nathaniel believe that Jon is simply so powerful as to tear the Lonely asunder with the force of the Eye. That information may be his best chance at reaching a satisfactory conclusion, here. 

“Peter’s loyalty has never been in question. Even when it has suited _all_ of us that we maintain cordial arrangements, he has been nothing short of devoted to your patron. Neither of us have ever been under any illusions as to where our respective allegiances lie,” Elias says quietly. Perhaps it’s even true. Nathaniel wants to believe it, at any rate, and that makes it easier. “Nathaniel, where _is_ he?” 

He bites back the thread of compulsion that threatens to spill from his teeth, even as he feels his temper fraying. He has the information that he needs, more or less, that Peter is alive - whatever _alive_ means in the wake of what Jon has done to him - and the rest is semantics. Fortunately, Nathaniel seems to have reached the same conclusion, and gives a little shrug as he turns back to his desk. 

“Within the mist, Mr Bouchard. And if you care to venture in yourself to find him, you’re welcome to attempt it. But I shouldn’t think you’ll be as fortunate as your Archivist, in that regard.” 

Elias stays by the window, breathes in, breathes out. “Thank you,” he says finally, slipping his cigarette case back into his pocket. “I will be in touch regarding future arrangements.” 

Nathaniel just waves him away. 

* * *

Elias rarely visits Moorland House without paying his respects at the mausoleum. It’s an indulgence on his part, really, but a private tradition of his own, and one he keeps to whenever he’s able. The memorials, such as they are, are spartan, little gaps in the stone containing urns of Lukas ashes. They are all uniform, alabaster, unmarked, nothing to distinguish one from another. Not for the first time Elias wonders whether Mordechai bought out a funeral director’s stock in one go, or if they’ve just maintained good relationships with a stockist over the generations. 

The mausoleum is designed to discourage mourning. It is a place of remembrance and respect, but not of _grief_. No pictures, no flowers, no names. Nonetheless, Elias takes a personal sort of pleasure in tracking his eyes along the rows of urns and naming each inhabitant. _Jocasta, Octavia, Elijah, Cordelia, Theophilus_. He has always appreciated the Lukas family’s predilection for good names. Peter is an outlier, in that regard. He is an outlier in _many_ regards where his family is concerned.

Mordechai’s ashes are in one of these urns. South-west corner, third from the top. Elias is tempted, as he always is, to reach up and take the urn. He would turn in his grave - if he had one - if he knew that Elias still remembered his place here. He would quite possibly rise from the dead in a fury if he knew half of what Elias did to keep his memory alive, what he did for _all_ of them. Elias did not have notable relationships with all of the Lukases, but those that he knew, he was careful to remember. Mordechai would have hated that. But then, things were so rarely calm between them. Elias knows that had he died first, Mordechai would have endeavoured to forget him as swiftly and as completely as possible, so really it’s only fair. 

He is not alone. He looks up to see a woman watching him, white hair pulled back from her face, sensibly dressed: a jumper, a knee-length skirt, a pair of wellington boots. They’re almost incongruous, those boots, given the Lukas tendency towards formality, but if one is going to go walking in the fields then it’s only sensible, and Lukases are _practical_ when all’s said and done. 

“Effie. Good afternoon,” he greets, watches her face tighten in a strange mixture of irritation and pleasure. 

“There are so few people left alive that call me that,” she replies, and Elias gives a little shrug. 

“Ephigenia, then, if you prefer it. It’s been a while. I was given to understand that you were on the Faroe Islands.” 

“ _I_ was given to understand that there was going to be a funeral,” she retorts, and Elias huffs out a laugh. 

“Ah. Nathaniel’s put the call out, then. No wonder this place feels so busy.” 

The silence settles onto them, and Elias knows that it is by design. Effie isn’t the Avatar that Peter is - none of them are, really, he is exceptional, it’s what makes Nathaniel so angry about his perceived failure - but she has enough of it about her to make her point. Elias turns to locate Aloysius’ urn to give his eyes something to do, finds it nestled snugly between Aeolus and Salome. 

“He isn’t dead yet,” Effie breaks the silence, and Elias nods. 

“So I understand.” He turns to look at her properly, “I wouldn’t have thought that that would make much difference, to you.”

“It wouldn’t, if he were another of us.” 

“Ah.” There it is, then, that Lukas pragmatism. It isn’t that Peter is favoured. Just that he _is_ powerful, and it doesn’t do to let one of the faithful slip away too soon. That’s fine - good, even. Elias can work with that. “Do you know what sort of state he’s in?” 

“I know that Conrad spoke to him - or saw him, at any rate. My understanding is that he’s lost.” 

That _does_ make Elias frown. Lost? It’s - a perturbing thought. Peter is one of life’s homing pigeons, circling back to where he needs be, inevitably knowing where he is in the thickest of mists or the darkest of nights. It’s a facet of the Lonely, or so he’s always said, part and parcel of whatever lets him walk halfway across the country in a matter of minutes, to sail _The Tundra_ precisely where it needs to be and no further, whatever the weather, whatever the storms. 

“Curious,” he says slowly. “Can nobody guide him out?” 

“They could.” 

“But they won’t?”

“Nathaniel-” Effie shrugs, “feels that if someone can’t find their way out, then they’re as good a meal for our patron as anybody else.” 

“I see.” That is _less_ than satisfactory. Losing Peter to the Archivist is one thing. Losing him to Nathaniel’s obstinacy is another entirely, and Elias can’t pretend he isn’t displeased by that. “I was under the impression that he wasn’t entirely without allies, here. Surely Conrad-” 

“Is disinclined to cross Nathaniel at this juncture.” Effie is already looking hazy at the edges, mist coiling thick and fast around her boots. That’s to be expected, really. Lukases are always twitchy before a funeral. Elias straightens his back. 

“You came to find me for a reason, Effie,” he gentles his tone, watches Effie give a little shrug, conceding the point. Elias would like to think that they’ve known one another for long enough that they’re beyond such pretences, but what is _length_ in a Lukas acquaintanceship? Decade upon decade and barely an hour of conversation. 

“Follow me,” is what she says, eventually, a wisp of white hair floating around her wrinkled cheek. Elias remembers her in ostrich feathers and pearls as a debutante. He follows. What else can he do? 

It is difficult trying to piece out what Effie’s motivations might be, beyond disagreeing with Nathaniel. It isn’t a power play, she’s too sensible for that. It’s possible that she genuinely wants Peter alive and feels that Elias is his best chance, but depending on the state he’s in, Elias is unclear as to what he can _do_. He cannot carry him out. He cannot navigate the Lonely without a guide. Nonetheless, the mist is gathering around them, frigid and damp at his knees, and Effie’s eyes are turned steadfastly forwards. 

“You’ve been here before,” she says after a moment, and Elias raises an eyebrow, surprised. 

“Can you tell?” 

“It knows you.” 

Perhaps it does. He’s walked these shores before, not just with Mordechai, but with Peter too. Convenience, largely, stepping from the Institute to home and back again. It’s an awful habit, really, deeply hubristic, but there’s a satisfaction to be had in emerging from the mists unscathed once again, a sort of awful thrill in wondering if _this_ will be the time that Peter decides to leave him there. 

Peter has always intended to feed him to the Lonely, in the end. But it’s judging that end which is the difficult part, and timing has never been his forte. 

Elias watches Effie out of the corner of his eye. She won’t leave him here, not today, she has a purpose. And he is unclear of her motivations, certainly can’t pretend to see them _here_ of all places. He feels numb, blind and half-deaf. Being here is like being underwater and he focuses on breathing as Effie walks him through what could be metres, what could be miles, to gesture to a figure sitting by the shore, fingertips trailing through the seafoam lapping at his ankles. 

He looks thinner. Hungrier. Elias keeps his distance for a moment, looks back towards Effie. 

“Lost, you said?” his voice is snatched away by the wind before he can hear the words, but Effie nods anyway, and Elias sets his shoulders. “Alright.” 

Peter doesn’t flinch at Elias’ hand settling on his shoulder, his jumper stiff with salt. He barely reacts at all, just an incremental turn of his head to catch his eye. Those ice-blue eyes of his. Elias holds his gaze. 

“It’s time to go, Peter.”

Peter snorts, a humourless little huff of air, and it’s irritating, but it’s a relief too. He is still alive, still _present_ , as much as that matters. Elias has questions, but he bites them back. Questions won’t be helpful, not now, and they can wait. Effie is still behind them - holding the door - and Elias tightens his grip a little bit. “Come along,” he prompts, expecting a protest, but Peter rises to his feet with the speed of a man twice his age, bones creaking, joints stiff. The beard goes some way to hiding the gauntness of his face and Elias knows that he hasn’t fed, that perhaps the Lonely has been feeding on him instead. 

“Where are we going?” he asks, voice rasping and thick with disuse. 

“Home,” Elias says simply, looks back at Effie who nods. It will do Peter no good to remain at Moorland, not now. Best he’s spirited away before Nathaniel can protest at another encroachment. This situation is - should be - salvageable. At the very least, Elias intends to salvage it. It will give him something to do while he waits for the opportune moment, to avoid unnecessary sacrifices where he can.

Peter doesn’t speak, but he does follow them. He doesn’t look at Effie, nor she at him, and Elias is reminded (not for the first time) that he knows the Lukases more fully than Peter ever has, or will ever care to. He wonders if Peter even knows who Effie is. Not that it matters. 

No sooner have his feet hit carpet as opposed to sand than Peter’s knees lock, and then give all at once, Elias forced to turn and set his hands against his shoulders to steady him. Effie is gone, and they are back in London, and Peter collapses onto the sofa and drags in a breath like it pains him. It _does_ pain him. Elias can see the strain in his face, the set of his jaw, can hear the rattle in his chest. He sighs. A bed would be preferable, but Peter hardly seems to have the strength for it, and Elias doesn't have the physical strength to heave him there. 

“Close your eyes. Sleep.” Questions can come later. Elias is not lacking in patience. He settles in an armchair and watches Peter slump sidelong, boots on the floor, curled in on himself like something old and wounded. Elias casts his eyes around the house, the country, his Institute, and waits. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter wakes up to find that nothing has changed, and everything is changing

Peter opens his eyes to the white ceiling and blue walls of the master bedroom in Elias’ house. It takes him a moment to come back to himself, fingers and toes tingling under the heavy duvet. The sheets are crisp and clean, recently washed, and he spends a few minutes staring at the wall. Those damn walls. Elias had been very _particular_ about the colour, the right shade of blue. _Borrowed Light_ , this one is called, bought at vast expense only for the whole place to look like some washed out watercolour. 

He feels - 

Well, no. He doesn't. That’s the problem. 

He can’t hear breathing behind him, nor a dip of the mattress that would suggest Elias’ presence, but Peter knows the layout of the room he’s lying in. There’s a chair set at the corner of the room and Elias could well be there, _watching_ him. Peter stifles a sigh and finally turns his head to see the chair empty, Elias nowhere to be seen. 

It ought to be a relief to be off the shores of the Lonely where Peter had been so sure he was going to die. Had resigned himself to it, set his eyes straight ahead to the horizon and said his last goodbyes to himself. Here he is, instead. Alone in a bed, wearing _pyjamas_. Peter hasn’t worn pyjamas since he was a child. He plucks at the cotton with distaste, wondering when Elias bought these and - more to the point - _why_. 

Peter sits up, the sheets rustling underneath him, trying to think through the fog in his brain. His head is pounding, aggravated by the soft wash of sunlight coming in through the curtains, and he remembers the coil of mist and the salt and the gnawing ache of loneliness eating at him like a hunger, stinging his lungs when he breathes. And then Elias. Stepping through the mist like he has any right to be there, leading him out, and - oh, yes, he’d woken, hadn’t he? Just briefly, long enough for Elias to guide him to the bedroom. Peter runs a hand over his jaw, scratching thoughtfully at his beard.

He does not know why he is here. He finds it hard to believe that Elias has come to find him out of some sense of moral obligation or - God forbid - affection. The little Archivist tore his head asunder (or so it felt) and yet here he is, and that’s disconcerting, because Peter knows that Elias’ loyalties have never wavered where the Eye is concerned. 

And yet. Here he is. 

There is an en-suite, and Peter heaves himself out of bed to wash, avoiding his own eyes in the mirror. He catches a glimpse all the same, bags set under his eyes like bruises, gaunter, more angular. He looks a bit like Nathaniel like this. The shower gel foams luxuriantly under his fingertips and Peter breathes it in, curious, vetiver and ginger and black pepper, warming on his skin. Elias and his little _luxuries_. Everything expensive, Egyptian cotton sheets and idiotically pricey paint for the walls in the bedroom he rarely uses. 

Never mind that. Peter focuses on what he can control, washing, brushing his teeth, combing his fingers through his damp hair and rubbing his beard again. Elias gets so _fussy_ when it gets unkempt. There’s a clipper in the bathroom cabinet. 

Peter leaves the bathroom with his beard untrimmed, rolling his shoulders back and feeling the age in his joints. Age is a complicated thing for any of them, but he _feels_ it these days, settling over him like mist, like steel, like heavy arms. His clothes are by the bed, clean. Elias washed his clothes. Peter rubs the fabric of his jumper between two fingers and tries not to find all of this too unnerving. 

It is unnerving. Deeply. This is not the first time he’s been wounded - or _indisposed_ , as Elias would have it - and the one time he came here to recuperate (a mistake, never repeated) Elias was testy and impatient with him, decidedly unsympathetic in his bedside manner. What _is_ this? Some misplaced guilt? Peter’s lip curls at that idea, no, he doesn’t approve of that at all. Still, he’s not so petulant as to refuse to get dressed, so he tugs on his clothes and tries not to grimace at how they feel all wrong on him, smelling of whatever (no doubt also absurdly expensive) detergent Elias uses. 

What is more unnerving is what he finds underneath the pile of clothes, a little golden chain that Peter knows was hanging around his neck when Elias retrieved (he refuses to think rescued) him from the mists. It’s nothing special. It has a ring hanging from it. Peter stares at it for a moment and then bends to pick it up, rubbing his thumb over the smooth, cold gold, considering his next move. 

Will _The Tundra_ still be berthed? Or will Nathaniel have reclaimed it in his absence, reassigned it to some other captain? Before he took the helm at the Institute he’d dismissed the crew, of course, sent Tadeas off to seek other employment, but he can find a skeleton crew in a day if he needs to and the sea is as good a place as any to recuperate. Right. Peter straightens his back and slips the chain and the ring into his pocket, nudging open the bedroom door and stepping through into the living room. 

Elias isn’t there either, and Peter casts his eye around it, the photographs on the wall, that damn _portrait_ of his. Eyes upon eyes. All of the wood in the house is grained and Peter wonders if Elias can see him through that, too, presses his thumb against one of the whorls on the bookshelf as he passes it and follows the smell of coffee to the kitchen.

He hears Elias before he sees him, talking to somebody on the phone, and when Peter rounds the corner he can see him with one of those damn smartphones pressed to his ear, as if there’s anything wrong with a landline when he’s in his own home. 

“-well, no, but it seems a fair enough question,” Elias says softly, not looking up at Peter who stares at him for a moment before deciding that he’s not going to interrupt him when there’s coffee to be had. The machine is whisper-quiet so Peter turns to the little electric grinder to grind coffee beans he doesn’t need, breathing in the acrid, earthy scent, grounding himself with that and the exasperated look Elias shoots him at the clattering, wrenching, mechanical sound of it shattering the peace of the flat.

He won’t do anything about it, though, won’t snap at him or physically _stop_ him. He’ll just watch. Ceaseless fucking watcher. Peter gives him his most cheerful smile, feels it pull unnaturally at his chapped lips, a sting where the skin splits. 

He is far more used to drinking coffee out of a battered thermos or an enamel mug than Elias’ dainty little espresso cups, but the coffee _is_ good, bitter and deep, settling at the back of his tongue against the mint of the toothpaste and the brine of the Forsaken. Elias is still listening to whomever is talking to him, giving a little hum now and again to show he’s still there, tapping the fingers of his free hand against the dining table. The kitchen is airy, spacious, full of light spilling from the windows, and Peter wants to hide himself in a cupboard like a child and curl into the dark. 

He doesn’t join Elias at the table but stays leaning against the counter, running his eyes over the neat little spice rack, the glass jars of pulses and flour and grains, as if Elias _cooks_. Peter knows that there will not be one non-perishable item in this entire damn kitchen bar - perhaps - a lemon or two, if Elias is leaning towards gin over brandy these days. 

It is then that the thought occurs to Peter that Elias had been in prison. He remembers _that_ from the Panopticon, Elias appearing at the opportune moment to bring all of his plans crashing down around him. He certainly doesn’t look like a man on the lam, seated sidelong in one of the dining chairs, one leg crossed elegantly over the other, in one of his apparently endless suits. This one is charcoal, slim cut and tapering to Elias’ slim waist. He looked just as comfortable in prison when Peter visited him, even in grey sweatpants and a white t-shirt. Peter thinks he’d find a way to make anything look insouciant, given half the chance, chains or wounds or bleeding to death in that damn Panopticon. 

Peter had invited Martin to stab the withered corpse of Jonah Magnus, and now he is standing in his kitchen drinking coffee. He feels dizzy, puts it down to the after-effects of becoming a meal for his patron (ex-patron? it doesn’t bear thinking about) and has another sip of coffee while Elias huffs out a laugh to whomever is on the other end of that phone. 

“Oh, I shouldn’t have thought so. Mm...well, we shall have to see. Of course. Goodbye.” He sets the phone down and only then turns to look at Peter properly, eyes lingering on the beard for just a shade too long. Well, good. Peter is well-accustomed to Elias’ dollhouse life, but he doesn’t intend to become an accessory to it any more than he could help. Elias is watching him like he’s trying to unpuzzle him, and it’s a surprise - not that Elias _is_ unpuzzling him, but that he’d allow his face to _show_ it. Peter leans back a little into the counter and feels the granite digging into his back, another grounding touch against his spine. 

“Not at the office, then, Mr Bouchard?” he says eventually, and Elias glances at the newspaper spread across the table. Broadsheets he gets by post, but Peter knows he reads the tabloids too. Elias reads everything he can lay his hands on. 

“It’s Saturday,” Elias replies, and that’s technically useful and absolutely useless. Saturday _what_? How long has it been? A week, a month, a year? There is no time to be had in the Lonely, not _fully_ into the Lonely where there are no seasons, no _tides_ , even, to demarcate the movement of the moon, just grey sand and the endless expanse of the shore. 

“No such thing as weekends at sea,” Peter mutters, settling into the inevitable irritation of being in a room with Elias Bouchard, because that at least _is_ a feeling. More of a feeling than the prickling wrongness crawling under his skin that tells him he should not be here - or anywhere - or really, be anything at all. Something has gone badly wrong and Peter has no doubt that it is, somehow, Elias’ fault. 

Elias brings his dainty little espresso cup up to his lips but pauses before he can sip from it, porcelain pressed to his lower lip for a moment before he sets it down again. Indecisive. Elias is always so deliberate in his motions and Peter can see that for all his calm, he is unsettled. 

He is distinctly ambivalent about being able to see that in Elias. It would annoy Elias to know that Peter can read him. It annoys Peter to know that he can read _anyone_ in such a personal fashion, a testament to the time that they’ve spent together, the little tells he cannot help but pick up. They are both failures, then, in that respect. He waits. 

“What happened, Peter?” Elias asks, and Peter braces for the tug of compulsion around his lungs, draws in a breath to confirm that, no. It is just a question. Considerate of him, really, and Elias is only considerate when he _wants_ something, so it’s not especially comforting. 

“When?” 

“Don’t be obtuse,” and there’s the snap, a little bite to Elias’ words. His hands are folded neatly on his lap. Slender, pianist’s fingers. Peter shrugs. 

“Your Archivist made himself difficult,” he settles on, blames the bitterness at the back of his mouth on the coffee rather than a sudden clench of anger. _Archivists_. Elias’ constant watching is bad enough, but Archivists are _meddlers_ by nature. His coffee is cold, now. He wrestles control of himself, feels the temperature of the room shift incrementally warmer where it’s dropped. Elias is still looking at him. “No matter,” he says after a moment, pasting on forced cheer. “It happens. A few months at sea and I’ll be right as rain again.” 

“I wonder,” is all that Elias says to that, soft and thoughtful, and Peter’s eyes narrow. There is mist coiling at his boots and this conversation is quickly entering territory he doesn’t think he wants to entertain. He’s going fuzzy at the edges, now, ready to step back into the cold embrace of the fog, and he hears Elias’ sigh as if from a great distance. “I really wouldn’t, if I were you.” 

That does give Peter pause. In all the time that they’ve known one another Elias has been resigned - sometimes, apparently, apathetic - about Peter’s habit of disappearing back to the Lonely when it suits him. Some circumstances are more convenient than others, of course, sometimes Elias is _irritable_ about it, but he has never - not once - tried to induce him to stay. 

He considers, briefly, that it’s a touch of sentiment on Elias’ part, the will to keep him nearby, dismisses that thought immediately. Next option - convenience. He wants to talk to him, to know what transpired where he couldn’t see him _or_ his precious Archivist, and that seems more likely. Peter sneers. 

“Why?” 

“Because I am not altogether certain that you’d find your way out again.” Elias replies. Peter drags in a slow, steadying breath, holding his gaze, searching for any hint of a lie in Elias’ eyes. He is a good liar, and it is not always easy to read them from him, but he looks - well, not quite _earnest_. Curious, if anything. It’s that that makes it ring most true. If Elias is curious, then there is something to be discovered, one experiment or another to be run. If there is something experimental about Peter’s return to the Lonely - his fingers twitch, and he feels something icy stuck in his throat. 

“Explain.” He means for it to come out as a demand, rough and low, that brusque Captain’s tone that has his crew jumping to attention. It sounds hoarse, instead. Elias lifts one shoulder in an elegant little shrug and Peter considers grabbing the shoulder, wrenching it from its socket. 

“I’ve been led to believe that you were constrained in the Lonely. Lost, I believe, was the term used. Your family were for the most part agreed to abandon you there.” Elias watches him after he says that, perhaps looking for some sort of reaction. Peter just shrugs, nods. It’s to be expected, really. He wouldn’t jump to Nathaniel’s defence, or Conrad’s, wouldn’t expect it from them. “Whilst you are quite obviously still capable of _summoning_ the Lonely, as it were, I think - well, I don’t know if you’d quite-”

“Shut up.” That’s better, that’s the tone he wants to hit, gruff and flat and uncompromising. He sets his coffee down, and the frost on his fingertips makes the china seem sharper than it is, sharp enough to cut. Elias continues as if he simply hasn’t heard him. 

“- whilst I don’t know how you’d go about _testing_ such a thing, it’s possible that-”

“ _Elias_ ,”

“-your patron simply doesn’t feel it worthwhile to-”

That’s enough of that. Two quick steps from the kitchen counter to the dining table and Peter reaches out to fist his hand in Elias’ shirt, dragging him upright by his collar. Eye-level. Elias’ polished shoes are barely brushing the floor. He is so _small_ , like this, delicate and fragile and eminently breakable. Peter wants to break him. “Elias,” he says again, low and dangerous, “be _quiet_.” 

Credit where it’s due, Elias doesn’t seem especially perturbed by being held dangling in one of Peter’s hands. He’s probably worrying about his shirt being creased. Peter considers tearing it out of sheer spite. He holds him there, gives him a little shake just to see the exasperated look he gets for it - _exasperated_ , like Peter is a child throwing a tantrum, not a man more than capable of snapping Elias’ neck. 

“If I tear your jaw off your pretty face,” he continues quietly, “then you’ll have a _very_ hard time getting yourself a new body in short order.” 

Elias sighs through his nose, closes his eyes for a moment as if summoning patience. He’s so ostentatious. Peter aches to cradle his head in his hands, fine bones, delicate features. To crush it, maybe. At least then Elias might do him the courtesy of looking surprised. 

“Fine,” Elias bites out, and Peter gives him one last shake before setting him down, watching as he straightens his shirt and smoothes the wrinkles from it, fingers flat over his chest, under his tie. “Try it, then, if you like.” 

Peter stares at Elias, choked by uncertainty and a low, throbbing sort of horror at the base of his skull. That sounds like a challenge, and he has never been able to resist one of those, but when the mist draws in and he prepares to step into the static and the quiet, he has to admit that something about it feels different. 

It is always cold there, he knows that from how Elias hunches into his coat whenever Peter has led him through, pushing past the uncertainty and the wrongness of bringing somebody else into that domain without _leaving_ him there. He does well by his patron, and his patron by him, and the convenience of a quiet journey is worth the recompense he makes up later in lonely sailors and other such melancholy types. He hasn’t really felt the cold of it since he was a child, but now it prickles against his hands, numb and chilling. The Lonely is inviting, cradling, soothing. It _wants_ him. But not as an agent, no, just as a meal. Peter shudders and lets it drop, turns abruptly on his heel to stride through the house. 

Elias keeps a collection of crystal decanters full of absurdly expensive spirits. Brandy, cognac, whisky. Peter knows that the vintages he chooses are not out of express personal preference so much as nostalgia - what he drank back when he was Jonah, the tastes he enjoyed on a different tongue, with different company. He pulls the stopper out of one and takes a long swig of whisky, burning at the back of his throat, washing away the sudden presence of bile there. 

“Such a waste,” Elias sighs, leaning against the doorway and watching Peter, who ignores him utterly, sitting down on the sofa and setting the decanter down by his boot. He can see Elias watching it, like he thinks Peter might kick it over at any moment, shatter it, send all of that whisky soaking into Elias’ ornate and handwoven rug. Fair enough. He might. 

So, what now for him? He is linked to the Lonely, _drawn_ to it, cannot be that other than what he is. But the Lonely does not _want_ him. Not in the way that he wants to be wanted by it. He is not ready to die in it yet, and that knowledge is a weakness that has something small and faithful in Peter cringing with shame. Lukases all go gentle into that good night, sooner or later. All of the urns in their mausoleum are full of ashes, but it’s not the ashes of their body, it’s their _possessions_ , personal effects, photographs. Their bodies are given to the Lonely at the hour of their death and Peter has always known that his will join them there one day but not now, not like _this_. 

He is alive, and he shouldn’t be. He is alive, and he shouldn’t _want_ to be, and it is Elias’ fault. It is Elias’ fault, and Peter hates him, and he knows him better than he knows anyone else in the world, and he hates him all the more for that. 

“Why did you take me out?” he asks, voice muffled by his hands, head cradled, fingers buried in his hair. He hears another sigh, the shifting of fabric as Elias settles on the sofa next to him, not touching him. Good. If he touches him Peter isn’t entirely sure that he won’t just kill him to make himself feel in some way briefly, transiently more whole again. 

“Because-” Elias pauses, tasting the words on the tip of his tongue, “I want to know what happened.” 

“Ask your Archivist, then,” Peter snaps, and Elias chuckles. 

“In the fullness of time, I shall. It’ll have to wait for now.” 

Perhaps the Archivist is recovering. That’s a comfort, at least, that being ripped apart by the man’s questions should at least hurt him in return. There are few more shameful thoughts than being pulled apart by a damn Archivist who might barely _flinch_ at it. If Peter had to be hurt, he is glad that he’s hurt him in return. 

“I will kill him,” he promises quietly, and feels Elias’ little snort of laughter. 

“Oh, yes, Peter. I’m sure you shall,” he agrees, warm and condescending. “Tell me what happened.” 

That question has a bit more force behind it. Peter grits his teeth and shoves down the bile that rises again, his lungs turned inside-out, voicebox already twitching as it tries to form the words to answer Elias’ question. _No_. He will not. He will not tell Elias that he kept his precious secrets and nearly lost his life - perhaps still _has_ lost his life - as a result. He will not give Elias that satisfaction, he will not admit that secret shame out loud and give it voice. 

Elias waits, and Peter can hear the soft tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway. All of his keepsakes, his little heirlooms. That clock had belonged to Robert Smirke, Peter knows that, and it hasn’t needed to be wound since it was first set turning. There is no catch to open it, no space to see the pendulum within, and Peter does wonder, sometimes, what keeps that old clock running. It feels like Terminus when he approaches it. He does not approach it often, wonders why Elias allows it in his house given his own horror of death. 

“For now,” Elias says eventually, “we are at a point of inflection. There is time. Questions to be answered. If you can still feed your god, then perhaps-” he leaves the point hanging and Peter _loathes_ that their thoughts are running along similar tracks. Feed the Lonely, appease it, make up whatever debt he has accrued by being so thoroughly thrashed by a scrawny wreck of a man, and perhaps. Perhaps. 

“What did he do to me?” he sighs, and Elias shakes his head. 

“I can’t be quite sure, yet. This is unprecedented. It raises an awful lot of questions. For now, what you _should_ do is rest.” 

“Why do you _care?_ ” the question explodes from Peter’s lungs before he can stop it and he turns his face away, doesn’t want to see Elias’ face when he answers, isn’t really sure he wants to _know_ the answer. He already knows the answer. Elias’ hand slides between his shoulder blades over his jumper and Peter thinks about breaking his fingers, thinks about pressing him into the sofa and choking the life from him, kissing the breath from him. Thinks about feeding _him_ to the Lonely, an acceptable sacrifice, surely. 

Except that he doesn’t think he can. He feels numb, still, aching and weak, and whilst Elias is fragile and breakable he is _powerful_. Peter doesn’t want to fight him, not today. 

“I’m not done with you yet, Peter.” The answer comes easily, as Peter knew it would. He sets his face back in his hands and just breathes, disgusted by how warm his breath feels against his palms where once it would be chilled and salty. He has nothing, not one thing, to say to that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who left comments after the first chapter, I really appreciate them!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief jaunt to the seaside

Peter leaves, obviously. But he does it via the front door. 

Whatever his personal circumstances now, he can’t just linger in Elias’ house without a purpose. It’s tempting just to drink himself into a stupor, but he won’t debase himself under those ever-watchful eyes, not like that. Never mind that he’ll be watching wherever he goes, it’s the _principle_ of the thing. Elias is always watching, and Peter is used to being able to wrap himself within the fog of the Lonely where those eyes of his can’t follow, and now-

Now he feels naked and exposed on the streets of London, letting his feet carry him onwards, step by step. People have always moved out of his way, drifting sideways at odd angles, couples with joined hands letting go of one another to let him pass between them. They move aside now, yes, but now they do it with a sidelong glance, noting him, _seeing_ him. Likely spotting the thunderous look on his face, the drawn-down ledge of his brows, and considering that he is not to be trifled with. It’s cold comfort. 

The _Tundra_ is - was - docked in Portsmouth. Peter isn’t sure if it’s still there. He could ask Elias, of course, but right now he can scarcely look at him without raking his face for smugness or pity or worry, _none_ of which he wants to see from him, so whilst the trip will be an inconvenience, it’s a relief as well. Maybe a five hour round trip, time enough to get his head together and consider what he’s going to do next. 

He already knows what he’s going to do next. He just isn’t ready to admit it yet. 

Elias lives in Kensington (of _course_ he does) and has done for centuries as far as Peter can tell, right in the thick of museums and embassies and embarrassingly expensive restaurants. That has always been _his_ house, whether he lives there alone or not. Peter suspects that even if he weren’t disposed towards disappearing for months, years at a go, even if he _had_ ever chosen to make that place his home, it wouldn’t have changed much to accommodate him. Elias has his keepsakes and his peculiarities and he isn’t inclined to alter them for the convenience or comfort of others. 

It’s for the best. It would be a shame to get comfortable there. At least as it is, Peter is quite unable to feel _at home_ there, and that’s better for both of them, it doesn’t let him grow complacent. The funny dance of theirs, alliances and marriages, cordial dinners and blazing rows, it’s all very _familiar_. Cyclical, really, tidal. They come together, they come apart. It’s at times like these that Peter remembers that he is just one more pawn on Elias’ board, a convenient piece for him to move around as he chooses. 

He never should have taken that damn bet in the first place. He’d been so _sure_ of it. Martin Blackwood, touched by the Eye, cutting a fine figure of isolation even before Peter had started his meddling. Apparently he’d been a better liar than Peter had anticipated - fine. Fine. All that that should have prompted was a brief bit of gloating from Elias and the fulfilment of his side of the bet, marking his Archivist in the Forsaken without taking him altogether. 

And yet. Pride, damnable pride. Peter shoves his hands into his pockets and scowls when they meet the ring on its chain, that little reminder of all that Elias has seen. Not that it matters. Hardly a revelation to him that they’ve been married - even if they’re not, currently. After being asked to take on the Institute Peter had made a quip about conjugal visits and Elias had ignored him entirely. They spent a lot of time ignoring each other. 

Being out in the open is hideous exposure to the crowds but it _does_ give Peter space to think, letting his feet walk him the hour or so from Kensington to Waterloo so he can catch a train to Portsmouth, settling in the station with his hands curled around a black coffee and watching the crowds go by. He has space, here, for a little experimentation. It’s a terrible thing to be caught in a crowd that he can’t hide from, but in a city like London it’s not difficult to be anonymous, and nobody gives him a second thought. The steam from his coffee smells like the fear of the young barista that had prepared it, blue hair and a bright smile, customer service face pasted on in front of the knowledge that they had no home to go back to tonight, parents that wanted nothing to do with them anymore. The reasons for that don’t matter because the upshot is the same - they are alone, and they are lonely. Peter had considered taking them, but - well. In the middle of a shift. It seemed rude. 

And maybe he’s a little nervous about the after-effects of trying to take someone and not have it _work_. If he can’t step into the Lonely himself, then who’s to say he _can_ throw anybody else in? And being arrested in the middle of Waterloo station if he can’t fade into the background-

There are practicalities to this that he’s forgotten. Being human. Being normal. Peter sips his coffee and bides his time, steps onto the train and finds himself a window seat, casting his eyes around his fellow passengers. There’s a couple curled close together, sharing a pair of headphones, no luck to be had there. A few other scattered travellers, reading books and newspapers. Peter turns his gaze to the window, lets himself fade into the background a little bit. 

There are layers to the Lonely. Strata. The mists and shores are not the same quasi-worlds he throws his unfortunate victims into, letting them wander ghost-cities with nary a sign of another living thing bar the papers and books and objects changing around them. Whilst Peter cannot draw the fog around him without risking losing himself again, he can still avoid people if he concentrates. Their eyes slip over him. It’s a facet of Londoners, of course, that their eyes will slip over him _anyway_ , but he can tell the difference. It’s a comfort. Time to think. 

The problem with thinking is that it drags up all sorts of questions for himself that he isn’t sure he wants to answer. Chief amongst them is what Elias wants with him, because he _will_ have some manner of plan he’s indulging. Schemes, byzantine schemes and machinations. He’d asked Elias, once, whether he thought he might have been a servant of the Mother in another life, can recall the scene vividly - Elias’ fingers curled around the stem of a wineglass, his eyes staring out at some poor unfortunates a few miles away, watching one of his games play out. A while back, this had been, back when Gertrude was still alive. Peter had asked, and Elias had given an absent little hum, curled the fingers of his free hand around Peter’s and rubbed his thumb against his palm. 

“Did you ever read Webster?” he’d asked, and Peter still remembers the irritation of that, rolling his eyes. _Webster_. Elias wasn’t one of life’s poets but he’d had all sorts of things drilled into him as a Regency gentleman, the sort of verse that one was expected to know. Peter had racked his brain, tilted his head back to think of the scant plays he knew (actors were so often lonely). 

“Webster - revenge tragedies, yes? Murder and intrigue?” 

“Quite,” Elias had sighed. “There’s a quote - _I do not look who went before, nor who shall follow me; no, at my self I will begin the end_.” And then he’d looked at Peter as if that ought to make everything apparent. Exasperating, infuriating man. 

Still, thinking about it, Peter thinks he might know what he’s getting at. The Web is all grand schemes with little thought for the spiders pulling at the strings. Some will live, some will die, and the plan will churn onwards regardless. But Elias starts and ends his schemes with himself, his own ambition, his own desires. Perhaps that makes all the difference. 

_Webster was much possessed by death, and saw the skull beneath the skin_ \- that’s Eliot, isn’t it? Fitting. Elias’ horror of death. Peter has never understood it much but now, possessed with the certainty of dying if he does that which has seemed most natural to him for decades, he feels it more keenly. 

The train travels on and on, stopping to pick up a handful of other travellers, and at Havant one of them sits opposite Peter. Bags under her eyes, hair in disarray. Elias could look at her and know her story, but Peter doesn’t need to know the detail. He can feel the loneliness coming off her in waves, and that’s more than enough. 

The problem with patrons is that they don’t talk _back_. There’s a case to be made that giving those that are loneliest to the mists is clearly the most suitable sacrifice. But what about those in loving families, those that will be most missed? Not to mention the question of quality over quantity. It’s hard to know how to worship something that is so oblique in its appreciation. For his part, all Peter knows is that thus far, he seems to have done alright. Certainly he is closer to the Lonely than most of his family. He can never quite be sure if they’re proud of him for that, or if they resent him for it. Probably both. So few of them hold just one motivation at any given time. 

At any rate, this woman will do. She is rifling through her bag in the mildly distressed fashion of someone who has run onto a train rather than miss it, and is only now trying to ascertain whether she has what she needs. Onto the little table between them goes a carton of apple juice, a half-chewed crayon, a purse, a pack of wet-wipes. A mother, then, or perhaps a nanny. Peter tilts his head a little and she looks up, seeming to notice him for the first time and flushing, instantly apologetic. 

“Sorry, won’t be a moment, just looking for something-” she mumbles, and Peter puts on his most amiable smile. 

“Oh, don’t mind me. I can never find what I’m looking for first time ‘round - forget my own head, next. Busy day?” 

She laughs, nods, pulling out what looks like an ID tag with a little _a-ha_ and starting to shove things back into her bag. “Something like that, yeah. Just off to work.” 

“Really?” Peter looks out the window, considering. “Where do you work?”

“The hospital - er, Queen Alexandra, in Portsmouth. I’m a nurse. Just, um - late for my shift, took my daughter to a playgroup thing and the last group overran and it was all a bit of a nightmare, so-” she cuts herself off, grinning sheepishly, and Peter smiles right back. He can read between the lines of all that frantic loneliness. A young mother, just doing her best. She’ll suit. It’s only another twenty minutes to Portsmouth and Peter asks gentle, probing questions about her life, her job. Carrie the nurse, single mother of two, seems awfully glad of the chance to chat. Says it outright, laughing like it’s absurd, “I feel like you’re the first adult I’ve spoken to in weeks that’s not a patient or a teacher!” and Peter gives her an indulgent look. Grandfatherly, almost. 

Back in his younger days, he might have tried a different tack for this sort of thing. Even now, there are sometimes people who can be coaxed to dark corners by a careful look and a few delicate implications. These days, he finds he has less of a taste for it. He wonders if he’ll age, now that his patron is apparently displeased with him. Aging is complicated. He met Elias in his thirties, back when he was still James Wright, and whilst he’s definitely _aged_ in that time (grey hairs, white hairs, crow’s feet at his eyes), he’s not done it nearly so fast as most would expect. Hovering in a nebulous little patch of years in his fifties, never mind what the calendar says, still reasonably limber, still far more active than his age would suggest. It would be a pity for all of that to end now. Best to make what decisions he can to avoid it.

The train comes to a stop and Peter stands, adjusting his coat and taking one last look at her. “Lovely to meet you, Carrie. Best of luck,” he says warmly, and steps off the train. A job well done. And two children growing up parentless may even prove to be good investments, in time. 

* * * 

Whilst he doesn’t necessarily feel better after relegating Carrie to the mists, he _is_ less hungry. Baby steps. It _is_ like being a child again, feeling around the edges of a power that he does not and cannot understand, driven by Nathaniel’s impatient instructions. Peter thinks about how long it took to feel comfortable with the fogs at his fingertips and purses his lips, stopping at a newsagent to buy a pack of cigarettes. 

He doesn’t want to smoke, not really, but people give smokers a wider berth these days. And the coiling mass of it around his head might just feel a little more like home. 

He reaches the marina first, line upon line of neat little pleasure ships, all white and blue, masts sticking straight up into the white sky. Dainty, pretty little things. Peter had considered getting one, once, a capitulation to Elias’ dislike of the _Tundra’s_ rather spartan decor. The fancy hadn’t lasted long.

It’s a longer walk from there to the harbour _proper_ , abandoning holiday-goers for the flinty eyes and brutal efficiency of the container port. Peter finishes his cigarette and flicks it into the slate-grey water, wandering past towers of blue and yellow crates, knowing that nobody would pay him a second glance here, Lonely or not. He breathes in, closes his eyes, lets the solitude of it all settle over him.

Shipping docks have a strange atmosphere to them, whatever the country in which they’re set. It’s always a cacophony of different languages, people coming home, people _leaving_ home, strangers slipping like wraiths into new lives. The crush of ships in the harbour itself is close enough that Peter can’t see the horizon, and he briefly considers walking further along until he can fix his eyes on it, but - no. Business first. 

He doesn’t need to scan the names of the ships to know that the _Tundra_ isn’t amongst them. Her imposing bulk is nothing exceptional, mind, but Peter could pick her out of an aerial view of a thousand ships, knows each inch of her hull like it’s his own skin. It’s unfortunate, but it’s not unexpected - if Nathaniel had assumed him dead (or soon-dead) then it’s only natural for him to reassign his ship. For all that Peter thinks of her as his own, she’s owned by _Solus Shipping PLC_. It’s possible that he’ll be able to reclaim her, but he won’t see Nathaniel until he feels a bit more himself. 

Approaching him weak will be an affront. That’s the express-ticket back to the mists and as much as Peter doesn’t want to die, he wants even _less_ to be killed by his uncle. It’s a weak, awful way to go. 

So. Land-bound, then, for the time being. He won’t sail on something other than the _Tundra_ , and as much as he would love to disappear to the quiet and simplicity of the sea, there’s something ever so wrong about this entire situation, this strange new world in which he finds himself. He’ll have more luck putting himself back together with Elias’ knowledge at his fingertips, loath as he is to admit it. And as for Elias’ plans - with his Archivist now marked by the Lonely, Peter isn’t keen to leave him alone. He is confident, yes, that Elias’ hubris will catch up with him one way or another, but it wouldn’t do to let him cause the apocalypse before even the Extinction has a chance to get its boots on. 

Not that he wants the Extinction either, mind. He is beset on all sides by ways in which the world might end, with no concrete idea of how to stop any of them. He wonders, just briefly, if this is how Gertrude felt. 

Watching people move crates back and forth is soothing, in its way, and Peter is in no particular hurry to return to London. He has questions or Elias, yes, but for every answer he coaxes out of him Elias will want one in return. It is never sensible to approach any sort of conflict unprepared. So instead he settles back and watches, following the movements of workers and sailors like ants, only pausing when one figure catches his eye. 

Tall, broad-shouldered, close-cropped black hair, eyes cast low to avoid unwanted looks. Peter’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline and he straightens his back a little, watching to be sure he’s right. Oh, there’s more grey at the temples, yes, but there’s no mistaking that hard-set face. Perhaps he might get some answers today after all. 

“Mikaele,” he calls, and Salesa’s shoulders hunch. He turns slowly, pendulously, like he might be inches away from throwing a punch, but pauses when he meets Peter’s eyes. 

“Oh. You.” 

“I heard you were dead,” Peter says cheerfully, lighting another cigarette and offering the pack to Salesa who waves it off, still looking around cautiously, not keen to be seen.

“We’ve all been dead from time to time, when it suits us,” Salesa replies, and Peter tilts his head at the word _we_ , gives him another long look. Would Mikaele fall to an Entity? It’s possible. But who would take him? This strange, ruthless, resourceful man, all volatile impulses and absolute pragmatism. Peter likes him well enough (as much as he likes anyone), appreciates his ability to keep his mouth shut and do what needs doing, but the idea of him being touched by any of the various Entities, even the less discerning ones - laughable. _We_. It’s all Peter can do not to smile. 

“Surprised that you’ve _stayed_ dead, under the circumstances. Don’t you have clients you’re disappointing?” he asks, grins at the reproachful look Salesa gives him. 

“There’s clients and there’s _clients_ , Peter. Anyone that needs to know I’m alive already knows.” 

“Oh, you wound me.”

“Please. You’ve never been a client.” 

True enough. Elias has, though, frequently. Peter wonders if he knows that Salesa’s alive, decides almost immediately that he must do. Gathering up artifacts for that Institute of his. Elias collects things. And there’s a practicality, obviously, in limiting the amount of powerful items available for use by others, but Peter doesn’t think that that’s really why he does it. Elias just likes to _have_ them. 

He takes a drag of his cigarette, tilting his head to look at what must be Salesa’s ship after the _Dorian_ was overrun by its traumatised crew. _Orpheus_ , it’s called. Salesa never did have much of a head for subtlety. “What brings you to Portsmouth, then?” 

“Oh, well, you first,” Salesa replies, giving Peter a look that’s all too searching. “I saw the _Tundra_ last week, in Shanghai.” 

Peter could shrug that off normally, play ignorance or apathy, but he’s _tired_ , and his lips twist into a scowl before he can stop them. “Company reshuffle. It happens. None of us are immune to bureaucracy.” 

“Yeah, you’re telling me. Haven’t heard from the Institute in a while.” Salesa rocks back on his heels, looks down at Peter - one of the few people who can look _down_ at him. “But last time I called, I was told that Mr Lukas was _very_ busy, and his assistant would be in touch.” 

Peter doesn’t reply to that. He’s not being interested in Salesa’s comments on his part in this - whatever _this_ turns out to be. Elias and his schemes. The damn Panopticon. He takes another drag of his cigarette and raises his eyebrows at Mikaele, waits for him to get to his point. Mikaele rolls his eyes and hunches into his coat a bit, shaking his head. 

“Listen. Normally whenever I get wind of something interesting, I put the word out, yeah? If it’s easy enough to obtain I’ll go out and get it and then sell it on, if it’s _difficult_ , then I’ll get a commission and some upfront payment for crew and equipment and whatever else.” So far so ordinary. Peter nods, eyes fixed on the horizon. “My _point_ is, the Institute has been pretty consistently interested in everything I can lay my hands on for as long as I’ve been doing this.” 

“Oh, yes. Elias does so like hoarding things,” Peter murmurs. 

“ _Right_. Nothing if not consistent. But the last three things I’ve got-” 

“Ah. Worried you haven’t been commissioned?” Peter flicks away the rest of his cigarette, considering that for a moment. “Well, he’s been-” incarcerated, “otherwise engaged.” 

“Living at Her Majesty’s pleasure hasn’t stopped him from commissioning my ex-crewmembers onto other ships,” Salesa snaps, impatient, and Peter - well, he doesn’t _strictly_ know what that’s referring to, but it doesn’t matter. The inference is obvious. Elias is a meddling bastard within the walls of a jail or outside of them. “And anyway, that’s not the problem. He wanted them. I mean, he _really_ wanted them, he all but took my arm off. Straight off the mark at the asking price.” 

And that’s _not_ like Elias. Peter tips his head back to the sky, feeling the breeze ruffling his hair. It’s getting longer, tickling his collar, close to the length where he might tie it up or cut it off altogether. Giving Salesa the first price he asks for is uncharacteristic; Elias likes his little indulgences but he’s prudent about his finances, one of life’s hagglers. 

“What were they?” 

“Nothing special.” Peter gives Mikaele a long look and he raises his hands in surrender. “Well, for a given _value_ of special, Peter, I mean - trifles. Nothing explosive, nothing world-changing, nothing that needs to be kept under lock and key or demands a blood sacrifice. But even from prison, he wanted them. That’s _unusual_.” 

It is. Peter can make an educated guess at the reasoning behind it. Elias is going all in, feeling confident, putting it all on red. If this attempt at his little Ritual fails - well, Peter doesn’t know what happens to the Panopticon, to the Institute. Perhaps it will crumble under the strain. It didn’t the first time, so far as he knows, but not having been there it’s hard to guess at the damage done to the old stone. Perhaps Elias thinks that if it does fail, he’ll have a harder time defending himself against whatever fury is unleashed by the Archivist and his little troupe of assistants and wants some options for his defence. 

At any rate, the more artifacts he has - particularly of other Entities - the more options he has for disruption. And if the whole Institute burns, then those objects of power burn with it. And if the Web, say, wants to start interfering, it runs the risk of getting rid of an awful lot of powerful pieces in the process. 

As a slow process spanning decades, obviously, Elias has been gathering these pieces in, taking his time, waiting for the right moment. The fact that he’s throwing money at the problem for the sake of expediency now gives some indication of the timelines on which he’s working. Not long, now. No wonder he seemed so unsettled. 

“Any ideas?” Mikaele asks, and Peter shakes his head. 

“I’m well past the point of untangling _his_ motivations,” he mutters. “And relieved of my duties at the Institute, so I really don’t have any reason to get involved.” 

“Non-interference,” Mikaele shakes his head, snorting. “Don’t know what I expected.” 

“Well, _you_ ask him, then.” 

“ _E le aia puga i le masi,_ Peter, I’m not getting involved. Happier being dead and anonymous than sticking my fingers into Bouchard’s schemes.”

“Probably for the best. Where are you headed next?” 

“Algeciras. Do you need a lift? There’s room on _Orpheus_ for a guest, if you have somewhere you need to be. I’m not going to run down the _Tundra_ for you, but I can get you to where you need to be.” 

It’s tempting. Mikaele is good, quiet company, and even if he can’t very well go around disappearing seamen when he’s a guest on someone else’s ship, he can at least get some peace out in the waves. It’s so grey out there, white sky, the dark band of the horizon blending into the sea. Peter shakes his head. 

“Not today. I’ll be back on the waves soon enough, though. Have fun being dead. Are you even going by Salesa these days?” 

“If I think up a more glamorous name I’ll let you know.” Salesa grins, eyes widening as a thought occurs to him. “Oh! Ran into that first mate of yours in Marsaxlokk.” 

“Oh?” Dear old Tadeas. Peter is, despite himself, interested. That’s another one who’s due to be passed onto his patron sooner or later. “How is he?” 

“Well enough. Asked me if I was going to see you anytime soon, gave me this.” Salesa reaches into his pocket and tugs out a chain, a brass boatswain’s call on the end of it. It’s been kept in good shape, beautifully polished, and Peter reaches out to take it with a thoughtful little noise. He hadn’t taken him for a defector. There’s a tug at his lungs. He could call the mists down around them with this, dispose of Salesa and a few other individuals while he’s at it, see if a mass sacrifice brings back anymore of his strength. 

He puts it in his pocket, bumping up against the ring, gives Salesa a smile. “Thoughtful of him. I wondered when I’d get that back.” 

Mikaele gives him the long look of someone who’s spent enough time around artifacts to know one when he sees it, but shrugs it off. “Well. Can’t tell you where he is now, obviously, but he sends his best.” 

“Obviously,” Peter repeats, rubbing his thumb over the call. Loyalties are shifting all the time. Elias is rushing headlong towards the end of the world and Tadeas is attempting an ill-judged escape from the One Alone, and he-

Is still keeping Elias’ secrets. Even from somebody as insignificant as Salesa. 

“Safe travels, Mikaele,” he says, rests his hand briefly against his shoulder and turns without a backwards glance. He has a train to catch. 

* * * 

Experiments between Portsmouth and London are helpful. He can still feed people to the Lonely, and with each new victim he feels a little stronger, a little more vibrant, his mind a little sharper. And yet the tingle of mist at his fingertips is still cold. A penance? Perhaps. Patrons do not talk back but Peter can understand the sting of dual allegiance. 

Not that he has allegiance to Elias. Not as such. 

The boatswain’s call hangs around his neck, cold brass that refuses to grow bodywarm, a little reminder. Peter had considered putting the ring next to it, decided against it. He needs to be clear about his priorities. He is, however, returning to Kensington, feeling a little more centred, a little more solid when he opens the door. 

He has a key. He’s had a key since before their first marriage. And no matter the divorces, the fights, the harsh words, the soft words (which are often worse), he’s not yet succumbed to the urge to drop the key into the waves. Knowing his luck, it would only wash up at his next port, anyway.

Some things are irrevocable, universal truths that it is useless to fight against. Peter is a Lukas, and that has meaning. He serves his patron or he dies like poor Evan. Whether he is powerful or weak, whether he is willing or not, he must feed it, or it will feed on him. And - alongside, parallel to that - he is hopelessly, overwhelmingly drawn into the swell of Elias Bouchard’s life.

It’s a sort of devotion, in its way, the devotion one might feel to an unkind god. He loves him as he despises him, as he curses him for not treating him better. He loves him as an inevitability, as a certainty, as an anchor. He closes the front door behind him and tries not to feel too annoyed by the fact that Elias doesn’t even pretend to be surprised by his return, doesn’t even do him the courtesy of looking up. 

Elias is sitting in his armchair, and there’s a fire lit, chasing away the November chill. He has a book open on his lap but he doesn’t seem to be reading it, staring off into the fire, likely watching some other poor soul’s life like it’s evening television. Peter steps beside the armchair, reaches down to curl his fingers around Elias’ wrist, lifts his hand to press a kiss to his knuckles, and that _does_ surprise him, he can see it in the way Elias breathes in, deliberate and slow, that easy breath he takes when he doesn’t want to tense and give away a reaction. He looks up at him, then, curious but not displeased, extending his fingers to brush them into his beard. 

“You’ve been robbing the barber again,” he sighs, and Peter snorts.

“And I suppose you’d like to put a razor to my throat.” 

“The thought had occurred,” Elias murmurs, smiles, watches Peter press kisses to his fingertips. “You’ve changed your tune.” 

“Went for a walk. Cleared my head a little.” The ring feels heavy, so heavy in his pocket. Peter wonders what Elias is thinking, feels his fingers curl back around his hand and pull him gently down to his knees, and that’s - yes, that’s alright. Peter settles himself (old bones, still, creaking) sat between Elias’ knees, watching the fire, head tipped back so Elias can drag his fingers through his hair. 

“You’ll stay, then.” It’s not a question. Peter closes his eyes. He has proven to the Lonely already that he can love it and serve it and still thwart its intentions. He might yet prove the same to Elias. 

“I’ll stay.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that for a LonelyEyes fic this sure is light on Peter and Elias interacting but we'll get there!
> 
> [This artist drew Peter with a ponytail](https://yesoksure.tumblr.com) and I lost all sense of time and now it's irrevocable headcanon. Every single thing they draw is spectacular but [this](https://yesoksure.tumblr.com/post/190849131645/painting-practice-ft-peter) in particular is brilliant
> 
> Not a few hours after posting this Jara draws [ Peter kissing Elias' hand](https://twitter.com/jara_257/status/1256626142905339906?s=12) I?????? LOOK at it. Too much for my fragile human body.
> 
> Comments & kudos fuel my awful ways and will be used to physically sustain me through quarantine.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Between the two of them, they've had time enough to make a lot of memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please do note the change in rating! There is nothing _especially_ explicit in here by ao3 standards but I've marked it as explicit for safety's sake.

Peter wakes to blue walls and a white ceiling and fingers curled at the nape of his neck, his cheek against a warm thigh, the unfamiliar weight of a ring on his finger. Nathaniel looks so disapproving whenever he sees that ring, face all pinched and anxious. Peter can’t say he’s _best_ fond of it himself (rings are awkward things to have on a ship, one more thing to lose, to damage) but he can rarely pass up a chance to irritate Nathaniel, so he knows he’ll make every effort to wear it whenever he’s around to see. 

As for that ring’s twin - Peter can feel it cold against his neck, turns his head upwards to squint into the light. 

“Ah - you’re awake.” For all of his many faults, his husband has such a _nice_ voice.

“Mmhm,” Peter stifles a yawn, stretches his legs out with a sigh. “First day of the rest of our lives, that’s the saying, isn’t it?” 

“ _Our_ lives, is it?” That gets a laugh, a little shake of the head. “Why, Mr Lukas, how collectively-minded you are this morning.” 

“I still think you ought to have taken my name.” 

“I could still be Peter, if you like.”

“Oh, _hilarious_. What a wit you are.” Peter rolls his eyes, closes them when he feels the brush of lips over his forehead. 

“There are enough Mr Lukas’s out there in the wide world without me adding to their number.” 

“S’pose James Wright is as good a name as any.” Peter tilts his head up, braces himself on his elbows to push up to claim a kiss, feels James smiling against his lips and thinks that perhaps marriage might be a fine enough adventure. 

* * * 

Nathaniel had warned him about James, about the Eye, but Peter is young and arrogant and headstrong. He is too young for James Wright, really, dark haired where James is already greying, his hands calloused but smooth where James’ skin is already turning wrinkled. He is old enough to know better and young enough to think he already _does_ , and he is foolish enough to love him. 

Nathaniel’s warnings are not based in the fear of misplaced allegiances, because the idea is unthinkable, heretical, and Peter will not hear it. Instead Nathaniel makes careful comments about the heirs that will not be forthcoming from such a match. Peter mentions this to James who laughs and shakes his head and says _oh, no, I should think that ship has sailed_. And that’s fine. Peter serves his patron in more meaningful ways than the provision of more bodies for the pyre, and he is not concerned with his legacy. 

The first marriage doesn’t last long. The prickling and pressure of the Eye grows from an irritation easily forgotten in the face of James’ laughing quicksilver eyes to something stifling and suffocating. James asks probing questions about his time at sea and Peter feels the walls close in on him, becomes snappish and sullen, watches James’ conviviality fade to impatience. He’s back at sea before six months have passed, and the divorce papers find him in Colombo. 

* * * 

Whatever their personal circumstances might be, the Institute is still funded by the Lukas family, and Nathaniel has little patience for Peter’s personal sentiments regarding fundraisers and gatherings. A representative from the family must attend, and since Peter has been foolish enough to marry the man, he has made his bed and must lie in it. 

So. Not three months after their divorce was finalised, Peter is nursing a glass of champagne and wishing it were something far stronger, the gentle hum of polite conversation a roar in his ears. He has endeavoured not to notice where James is, not to care about who he chooses to engage in conversation. Nonetheless, he can see him across the room talking to an old man with hands that flap about his face like butterflies, and Peter scowls. He is not even granted the freedom of being able to fade into the background, no, he is required to be _present_. An ambassador. He plucks a canapé off a passing tray and tries not to look too overtly vicious when he bites into it.

When he feels the prickling against the back of his neck he thinks for a moment that James might have slipped around behind him without his notice, but he turns to see a middle-aged woman looking at him. She is making no pretence of doing otherwise, she is _watching_ him, and she seems utterly concerned by whether he might be offended or startled or angered by it. 

“Ms Robinson, I presume,” he says, because much as he would love to claim ignorance of James’ puppets, he is aware enough of this one. He can never quite tell if James loathes her more than he admires her. At any rate, he pays her an awful lot of attention. 

“Mr Lukas,” she replies, and Peter raises his glass to her in an ironic little toast. She is an archivist - she will one day be the Archivist. He knows very little about that except that it means she is liable to stick her nose where it doesn’t belong. He knows that James sets a lot of store by her opinion and is very careful about what he tells her, and what he does not. He can feel her eyes cutting through the haze of uncertainty he does his very best to cultivate around himself, and he wonders why James’ eyes don’t feel quite so _cutting_. 

Perhaps James is just more courteous with him. Perhaps James is just less powerful. Neither theory would please James much, he knows. 

“I’d have thought a gathering like this would be anathema to your preferences,” Robinson says, and Peter notes that her glass is full, her eyes are clear. She doesn’t look like she’s had a drop. He has distinctly noted her take four glasses from passing trays - either she isn’t drinking them, or she has the constitution of an ox. 

He shrugs. “Large parties can be very lonely places, sometimes.” She knows who he is, why hide it? He is not best suited to playing nice with James’ pets and she is still _looking_ at him. “And anyway. One does what one must for the good of the family.” 

She says nothing, and soon leaves, and Peter is glad of it. There is a young man at the party talking at length about troubles with his landlord, his tiny flat, the strange liminal feeling of living alone after being so often surrounded at university. Peter listens, and he thinks he might feel an idea forming. 

Against all odds when the canapés have run dry and the empty glasses are being collected Peter is still there, watching, waiting. James bids the last guest goodbye and looks at him, hands in his pockets, considering, thoughtful. Peter thinks about fading into the background, decides against it. There is an awful vulnerability in being seen. 

“Peter,” James says finally, reaches under one of the tables and pulls out another bottle of champagne. “Have a drink with me, will you?” 

“What’s the occasion?” Peter asks, cautious, not displeased. He’d expected some manner of cutting remark and instead James seems outright pleased to see him - notwithstanding the fact that he’s ignored him all night. But that’s a blessing, in its way, isn’t it?

“Oh, who needs an occasion. We’ll toast to old friends,” James replies, and smiles and smiles. 

They are engaged again two months later, and married, and divorced once more before the year is out. This time it doesn’t hurt quite as much.

* * * 

“There is not one functional dial on this entire panel,” James says flatly, and Peter grins from the doorway leading onto the bridge, watching James run his hands over dials and switches. 

“I had no idea you fancied yourself a naval man.” 

“I _don’t_. But I know that we are not, for example, travelling due North-East. We’re not travelling anywhere, we’re _docked_.” 

“We-ell-” Peter tilts his head sidelong, takes a few steps forward to wrap his arm around James’ shoulders, “that’s a matter of perspective.” 

“Peter.” James turns and fixes him with those sharp eyes of his, expression inscrutable as Peter laughs and raises his hands in mock defeat. “Let me see.” 

“Alright, alright-” Peter lifts a little of the Lonely, enough for James to feel the rocking motion of the sea, the tides that pull at the _Tundra_. He’d promised James a surprise - never mind that he _hates_ those - made all sorts of inferences about candlelit dinners and dancing. “I bet you can’t guess where we’re going.” 

James gives him a look like he’s genuinely considering throttling him, folds his arms to stare into the mist. “Do you, now. And what do you bet?” 

“If you guess,” Peter replies, “I’ll take you back. If you lose, we go where I’m sailing.” 

James’ expression shifts, strange and ambivalent for just a second, before it smoothes out and he taps the console, perhaps wondering if North-East is their true heading or a bluff. “Caribbean,” he says finally. “You _were_ quite sore about not getting our honeymoon there.” 

Peter grins, shakes his head, presses his lips to James’ temple. They’re going to Norway. The fjords there are stark and beautiful, and Peter thinks James ought to see them. 

“ _Peter_ ,” James groans, pinching the bridge of his nose as the mist uncurls and reveals mile upon mile of endless sea on all sides. “I’m- I have a _meeting_ , Peter, for God’s sake, take me _back_.” He turns like he might grab the wheel and Peter catches his wrist, wraps his free arm close around James’ wrists, pulls him in like he might waltz with him, like might dip him. It _has_ been a while since they’ve danced. 

“It’s been a while since you’ve had a holiday,” Peter murmurs, lips close to James’ ear, feeling him tense and irritable in his arms. James only likes things when they’re his idea, but Peter thinks he can get away with this. “Take a few days.” 

“You’ll be trying to get rid of me within a day,” James sighs, but he lets Peter guide him into a sway, dancing to nothing. They’re between marriages - between divorces - and Peter is feeling a little sentimental. Third time’s the charm, perhaps.

* * * 

James is too old for him, but Peter is quite fond of parts of him. He has wrinkles papered at the fine skin of his wrists, and blue veins beneath. Where his body has softened from what was clearly a lean frame in his youth he is gentle and curved. Peter likes to wrap his arms around him and hold him close, to take his time with him. There is an urgency in encounters, sometimes, and James is rarely urgent. Everything is deliberate and careful, and if a thing is worth doing it is worth doing properly. 

Still - Peter can’t say he’s altogether _displeased_ to enter the tunnels under the Institute and find James Wright’s body enucleated and pretty little Elias Bouchard steadying himself against the walls. 

He’d had rather nice eyes, Bouchard. Blue, blue eyes, though sometimes tinged with pink at the edges, an obvious tell. Peter had smiled at him and watched him trail those pretty eyes down his body, and wondered if he had ever been so young and so foolish. 

Well. Elias Bouchard isn’t quite the same, anymore, and his eyes are grey and cold.

“Really, James, he’s a _child_ ,” Peter laughs, stepping over a widening puddle of blood to take him by the shoulders and steady him. He feels delicate under his hands, bird-boned and fragile, but his eyes are as sharp and resolute as ever. 

“It’s not James anymore.” James - Elias - grimaces, runs his tongue over sharp, white teeth with a thoughtful expression. “Mm. Well, I wasn’t going to jump into the body of another middle-aged man.” 

“What will you do with the body?” Peter asks, looking down at James Wright’s corpse. He remembers that body pressed against his in a dance, sure hands against his, the arch of his spine when he kissed under his jaw, the precise spot on his lap that was best for pillowing his head. When James had told him about this, he hadn’t believed him. But he has to admit that James - Elias - _Jonah_ \- looks better like this, young and glass-sharp. “I suppose you want me to get used to calling you Elias, now?” 

“You can’t keep calling me James, and you’re not going to start calling me Jonah,” Elias agrees. “The body will be accounted for.”

“Oh? Got yourself a clean-up crew?” 

“Something like that,” Elias agrees with a sigh, tips his head forwards against Peter’s shoulder. Peter tuts, wraps a secure arm around his waist and presses a kiss to his temple, smells panic on him, soaked into his hair. 

“Tiring work, this?” Peter asks, mainly because he isn’t sure if he ought to be concerned. The process is simple and violent and awful, but he doesn’t know what the signs of success are, how to tell if something's going wrong. Elias feels warm and alive in his arms and his pulse jumps under Peter’s hands when he slides a hand to his neck, brushing his thumb against the sharp line of his jaw. 

“Oh-” Elias tilts his head up, meets Peter’s eyes, something strange in his expression as he watches him. “The lungs keep breathing, the blood keeps pumping, and we move on.” 

“Boats against the current,” Peter agrees, grinning and kissing Elias’ clammy forehead. “Well, there’ll be a lot of fear in that blood of yours.” 

“Oh, yes.” 

“Adrenaline too, I shouldn’t wonder.” 

“Certainly.” Elias’ hands are slipping under his jumper and pressing at his hips, his back, and Peter can’t tell if it’s just a need for some sort of skin-contact - curious, James was never quite so tactile - or something more. “It’s quite a rush. You ought to try it.” 

“I like my eyes where they are.” 

“Yes,” Elias smiles, Peter can feel it against his shoulder, feels a few sharp points of pressure as he curls his nails against his skin. “I imagine you do.” He doesn’t like the sound of that much. An image jumps to mind, his body, Jonah’s eyes, and Peter isn’t entirely sure whether it’s the product of his brain or an idea being nudged into his mind. The response is the same, either way - it’s the work of a moment to press Elias back to the wall with a firm arm banded against his throat, watching those pretty eyes widen with the sudden urge for air. 

“I don’t think,” Peter says slowly, applies a little more pressure to watch Elias’ newly-acquired eyes roll back into his skull, “that I’d make a very good vessel for you, dear heart.” He has his free hand braced against the damp stone next to Elias’ head, looming over him, a thigh between his legs which - ah, well isn’t _that_ curious. “Adrenaline?” Peter teases, and even when oxygen-starved Elias has the presence of mind to roll his eyes. “Oh, dear. Do you think this new body of yours is up to it? I bet we can find out.”

“Get _on_ with it, Peter,” he snaps, voice gone strained and tight, one arm clenched tight around his wrist, the other fumbling with the buttons of Peter’s trousers. 

It’s not the most sophisticated way of christening a body. If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly, but they’ve time enough for that later. Peter explores the limits of this new body of Elias’ in the heart of the Panopticon, carries him home through the Lonely to press him to the sofa, to the bed, to the tiled walls of the shower. And Peter can’t feel too bad about overstimulating Elias too far, too fast, because he _knows_ him. And when James had asked him to meet him under the Institute, Peter finds it hard to believe he would have expected any other result. 

* * * 

Elias Bouchard, as it turns out, has a few habits he indulges. Peter wakes to the sheets thrown back and a sweet, heavy scent in the air, trailing from the balcony that runs along Elias’ bedroom. He’s out there, wrapped in Peter’s heavy seacoat, and he doesn’t look up immediately when Peter steps out to join him, brackets his hands with his hips and bends to kiss his neck. He feels ludicrously small in that coat - delicate, expensive. Peter has not handled him with much care so far but he does now, dragging his lips from his ear down to his shoulder, breathing in whatever it is Elias is smoking.

“You’ll get yourself arrested doing that,” 

“In Kensington?” Elias laughs, shakes his head, passes the joint back for Peter. “I shouldn’t have thought so, no. You’re the one naked on a balcony, Peter, you’re in far more danger of being arrested than I.” 

“How does this take you?” Peter asks, eyeing the joint with curiosity. “Eye-touched as you are?” 

Elias sucks in a deep lungful of cold air and hums, watches Peter take a drag. “Oh, I see all sorts of things, it doesn’t change that. It just - matters less.” 

“S’pose I can see the appeal in that.” Peter wraps his arms around Elias’ waist and holds him. It’s chilly out but he doesn’t feel it, and Elias leans back into his chest and points out the constellations to him, tracing them into the air, fingers outstretched like he might reach out and pluck them from the sky. Peter thinks that Elias is a strange and cold and distant star, that he has burned his fingertips trying to touch him, and he will do the same again. 

“Elias-” he says softly, and Elias shakes his head, turns to loop his arms over his shoulders and stop his mouth with a kiss. 

“No. No proposals, not tonight,” he replies. Peter blinks down at him and Elias just smiles, takes him by both hands and leads him back to bed. 

His coat smells like sweat and marijuana and blood, come the morning. Peter presses his nose into the collar, looks out to the horizon where Xiamen waits for him, and waits for it to smell like salt instead.

* * * 

Things are not always so peaceful. Peter steps from the Lonely straight into Elias’ office, looming behind his chair. 

“Ah, Peter.” He has the gall to sound pleased, _casual_ , not bothering to turn and meet his eyes. “Have you seen the papers?” 

Inadvisable. Peter is not in a temper to be goaded, and for all of Elias’ tricks and his little games, he has very little recourse against being grabbed by the back of his collar and dragged upright, pressed over his own desk, an arm bent to the small of his back hard enough that it creaks with the strain. He could break it, if he tried. Elias hisses in a furious breath through his teeth and then lets it out with pointed, obvious calmness, cheek pressed to the very article that has caused Peter’s ire in the first place. 

“Your _damn_ Archivist-” Peter snaps, fancies he can _hear_ Elias’ eyes rolling, gives very careful thought to the idea of killing him and Gertrude both, “has gone too far this time.” 

“Then take it up with her,” Elias snarls. 

He won’t. They both know it. It’s part of what’s making Peter so angry. If it had been anyone else, he’d have thrown them to the Lonely without a thought. He is doing Elias a favour, even now with years of work and countless thousands of pounds going to waste, he is doing Elias a favour and he’s furious about it. 

“I think I’d rather have my pound of flesh. And you know, Elias - I bet you wanted this all along,” he mutters instead, keeping Elias’ wrist pinned to his spine as he presses their hips together. There is a bottle in the top-right drawer of Elias’ desk and Peter wonders if he uses it with anybody else, decides swiftly that he doesn’t care. He is here _now_. 

The Lonely will not be satisfied with the paltry recompense of having Elias Bouchard breathless and gasping beneath him, with the bruises Peter layers down his shoulders and his back after stripping him bare, biting at the top vertebrae until he breaks the skin. The taste of blood is of little consequence to the One Alone, as is the way Elias’ breath hitches when Peter presses two fingers into him, three, rough and too-much-too-soon. 

Elias likes this too. Peter is discomfited to find that that matters to him. It shouldn’t. None of this should matter. 

He fucks Elias with his arm still pinned and fingers pressed flat against his tongue, the desk rocking hard into the floor with every deep thrust, hauls him back into his lap to wrap calloused fingers around him and make him beg. None of this is suitable penance for his god, but it’s a start. It makes Peter feel better to put Elias on his knees and hold him in place, and when he comes (arching, gasping, mooring himself with his hand in Elias’ hair) he pretends that he doesn’t see the satisfaction in his eyes. 

“Well,” Elias sighs a few minutes later, cheek pillowed against Peter’s leg. “Are you feeling better?” 

_Yes_ Peter thinks. He shakes his head, watches Elias piece himself back together again - underwear, shirt, trousers, belt - watches him touch one of the bruises on his shoulder and grimace. “She’s a loose cannon,” he says quietly, and Elias shrugs. 

“She’s- serving her purpose.” 

“You should have told me.”

“Perhaps.” Elias gives Peter an exasperated look, still somehow managing to pull off aloofness with his lips swollen and his voice hoarse. “But there’s no sense in regretting what is done. And really, Peter, the common _press_ -”

“Don’t.” 

Elias shuts his mouth. Grants him the small mercy of not unpiecing a few years of his life for his merciless analysis and turns his attention to his cufflinks instead, malachite set in silver. Peter gave him those. He stares at them for a moment and then starts to straighten himself out as well, fighting the gnawing ache that comes with having no sudden purpose. He’s hungry. Perhaps the way Elias reaches out for a kiss before he leaves will go some way to easing that. 

He doesn’t return home for a year. 

* * * 

So much is unspoken between them. Peter brings Elias to a few family funerals when they’re married and watches in consternation as he glides around the room greeting relatives who treat him like an old friend - as much as _any_ Lukas might treat an old friend, which normally means eye contact and recognition of his presence. 

He knows about Aloysius, about Mordechai, he knows that Elias is the Lukas family heirloom that none of them seem to be able to shake, that he is only the latest in a line of Lukas men to get caught in his net. 

Then again - he never married any of them. 

* * * 

_I have a job for you_. 

Elias’ voice sounds odd through the satcom. He’s told Peter for years that he ought to buy a phone, and Peter refuses, has no interest in being so constantly, awfully available. Still, there’s only one person in the world who knows the satcom details of the _Tundra_ , so maybe it amounts to the same thing. 

“I don’t _think_ that’s how the benefactor-beneficiary relationship works, Elias,” he mutters, glaring at the panel and shoving his hands in his pockets. 

_Don’t be petulant. Will you be back in the country anytime soon?_

“I...could be,” Peter concedes. They’re at the end of a job, and due a changeover of crew. He is sated and numb with the fogs, and at that point where the thought of Elias’ sharp grins and heated kisses is more tempting than bothersome. “What do you need?” 

He gets a heavy sigh, and that makes him tilt his head, interested. Whatever this job is, Elias isn’t _happy_ about it. 

_I am liable to be- indisposed, shortly._

“Oh? Taking a holiday?”

_Not as such._

“Then what?” 

_As things currently stand, I’m not in a position to say._

Peter frowns, rubs his jaw. “Do you mean you don’t _know_?” 

A long pause. And then:

 _Yes_. _There are a lot of moving parts. My best guess thus far is incarceration, but there’s a case to be made for hospital, too._

“My, my, Mr Bouchard, what _have_ you been doing?” Peter murmurs, playing for time.

 _Only the usual. But if I am to be imprisoned, I can’t have the Institute unmanned_. 

“And you want a puppet boss. I see.” Needless to say, it’s not an attractive prospect. Landlocked, confronted with _managerial_ responsibilities, employees? Peter feels prickly all over just thinking about it. Even the satisfaction of seeing Elias in chains isn’t worth that. “Can’t you find somebody else?” He means for it to come out as dismissive but it hits a strangely whining tone instead. Peter makes a face, briefly disgusted with himself.

_If I must, yes. But I thought that this might be mutually beneficial._

“I know you set a lot of store by your talents, Elias, but the prospect of a conjugal visit isn’t enough to send me high-tailing across the globe to run your bloody Institute.” 

_Oh, for God’s sake_. 

He’s exasperated. Peter grins. That, at least, is always satisfying. 

_Use your brain, Peter, you **do** have one. You’ve been badgering me about researching Dekker’s theories for years. Now’s your chance. You’ll have the Institute’s resources at your disposal. _

Peter drums his fingertips on the console, staring at the horizon, imagining a tidal wave cresting it to consume them. All of their schemes and plans washed away in fire or flood. He can't fathom why Elias seems so unconcerned by it - but then, he is the centre of his own little universe. His death is as fearsome a prospect for him as the death of the world entire. Peter supposes it makes all threats equal, at a point.

“I suppose I could avail myself of an assistant or two while I’m there,” he murmurs - playing for time again, saying things he knows will irritate Elias. He isn’t expecting the weighted silence from the satcom - thinks for a moment that he might have lost his signal until it crackles to life again. 

_You can appoint a personal assistant, if you like. You can’t take any of them._

“Can’t I?” 

_Oh, no - my grip on them is quite firm these days, with Jon doing as well as he is. You’re out of luck unless you can persuade one to defect, and I sincerely doubt you’ll be able to manage that._

Peter bristles, Elias’ tone warm and smug and oily, dripping out of the console and down his spine. He’s being played, somehow, he’s sure of it. But whatever Elias has cooked up, Peter is reasonably confident that whatever research into the Extinction will only be sweetened by snatching one of his precious pets from under his nose. Acceptable risk. 

“Do you?” 

_Oh, I’d stake their life on it_. 

“And-” dangerous territory, Peter can _feel_ it, “what would you want in return?” 

_You already know the answer to that._

He does. It’s all he’s talked about for the last few months, his Archivist, precious little Jonathan and his burgeoning powers, how he needs him marked by the Lonely but not consumed. Peter is loath to play along with Elias’ schemes, but he _is_ intrigued by this. And he has never once lost a bet against Elias.

“No interference from you?” 

_Perish the thought_. 

That’s not especially reassuring. Peter sighs, drags his fingertips over the console, wonders when he started to feel so _old_. 

“I’ll be back in the country next week. Will that suit?” 

_Oh, yes. Very well indeed._

“Elias.”

_Peter?_

“I’ll visit you in prison. It’ll do my old heart some good to see you locked up where you can’t do any mischief.” 

That gets him a laugh, low and warm and satisfied. 

_If you can find any cell that can keep me from mischief, Peter, I commend you. See you next week._

* * * 

The Lonely is an escape, a sanctuary, his first and only haven. Peter is not used to feeling hunted within it but the Archivist’s eyes are blazing away the mist, searing and awful. He is flayed open, his life bared, and isn’t that just the _worst_ of it - every part of that, Elias could have told Jon himself. Peter flinches, cringes from being so thoroughly known but the Archivist isn’t finished with him yet. 

“What was his prize?” he asks, voice layered and strange and gripping at Peter’s throat like a hand. “What did he get if you lost?” 

“Oh,” Peter laughs, shakes his head, presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “He got _you_.” His little Archivist, his creation, his angel from the raw stone of a scrawny, twitchy little man. 

“I-I don’t understand.” Of course he doesn’t. Peter drops his hands to look at Jon, already trying to gather the Lonely around him, though he knows it won’t come. The Archivist can See him and there is not an inch of this place he couldn’t follow him to, and Peter is drowning in it. 

“And you won’t. Not from me.” He and Jon are pawns on Elias’ board but since his part in the game is through, now, he is disinclined to end it with a betrayal. “I’m done,” he adds quietly. 

“Tell me.” 

It feels like the rush of champagne bubbles up his throat, his nose, forcing his mouth open to drag in air. Like the freezing winds of Norway and the first drag of a joint on Elias’ idiotic balcony. 

“I’m not saying,” Peter grits out, digging his heels into the sand, bracing himself physically against the force of it, “another word.”

“Tell me,” Jon snarls, advancing, “or I will rip it _out_ of you.” 

“No-” 

“Answer my question!” 

“No! Leave me _alone_.” He is unmoored, unanchored, and he finds all of a sudden that he cannot close his eyes, frozen with the force of the weight on him.

The Lonely is the same quick-moving grey as Elias’ eyes and Peter can’t think how he hasn’t noticed it before. 

“ _TELL ME!_ ” 

He thinks he screams. It’s hard to say. And it doesn’t matter much, anyway. 

* * * 

Peter wakes up to blue walls and a white ceiling, and Elias’ head on his chest. He’s not asleep - Peter can see his eyes moving, watching something, and his fingers are trailing little circles against Peter’s chest hair, absently affectionate. 

“Ah - you’re awake,” Elias lifts his head, snapping back to the present and cupping Peter’s jaw with one hand, searching his face for something. He seems to find it, whatever it is. 

“First day of the rest of our lives?” Peter says softly, and Elias’ face does something strange and startled. He looks, for a moment, like he might almost feel trapped. It doesn’t last long, and when Peter leans in to kiss him Elias softens under his touch, sighing against his lips. He still looks tired. But he smiles, rests their foreheads together, and it’s as good an anchor as any. 

“Something like that.” 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somebody drops in for a visit

“What are you watching?” 

It’s the second time Peter’s asked Elias that this morning and, once again, he gets a shake of the head by way of a response. This isn’t unusual. It’s rare that Elias focuses his attention in any one place for long and Peter is glad of the quiet. If Elias is watching something, then it means that he’s not gloating or lecturing, and he could almost forget he is sitting in a brightly-lit Kensington kitchen rather than lost to the sea as he’d prefer. 

That said, he _is_ curious, because Elias has been watching whatever it is for over an hour now with barely a comment, barely a twitch. His coffee’s gone cold. 

Peter likes to be alone, yes, but he isn’t immune to boredom. Cabin fever is easier to deal with on the sea where the hypnotic, rocking sight of waves is enough to calm him but here it’s a constant onslaught of shifting sunbeams and birdsong and passing cars. All too much, far too much, no quiet to be had where he can forget the time slipping by, just distraction, agitation, constant _input_. Peter makes a face and stands up, deciding that if he has to exist in the real world then he’s going to at least venture out to the shops to find himself something to eat. 

When he comes back, sated by a frail old pensioner and with two shopping bags in-hand, Elias is still watching. He is impassive, barely even blinking. Peter puts milk in the fridge and flicks the kettle on, sticking his nose into a container of tea and then recoiling. 

“What _is_ this?” he demands. Elias’ eyes don’t shift in his direction, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t looking at him anyway. 

“Lapsang souchong,” he replies, as if that’s at all illuminating, and Peter grimaces. 

“It smells like a bonfire.” 

“Mm,” Elias props his chin up on his hand, eyes still fixed on the middle distance, while Peter goes in search of ordinary tea. It’s too much to ask that Elias might have something like PG Tips lying around, obviously, but something vaguely _drinkable_ would do. 

He loses his taste for coffee after around ten. And - and he is _not_ thinking about this, but it’s there regardless - Martin Blackwood had made very palatable tea, left on his desk from time to time with no sign of the man himself, just how Peter likes it. Betrayals and manipulations aside, Peter has to give credit where it’s due, he was a good assistant. And if one betrayal was enough to dampen his ability to tolerate someone, well, he’d not be here at all. 

In the end he finds something which is labelled Orange Pekoe but doesn’t smell of oranges, and is the closest thing he can find that might _actually_ end up like tea. 

“Don’t suppose that, er - thing from the Stranger did any damage?” he asks, stirring a teaspoon through the mug he finds tucked away at the back of Elias’ cupboard behind all the wine glasses and espresso cups. It’s a good mug, dark blue ceramic, hefty, big enough for a proper brew. Peter is refusing to feel at all sentimental about the fact that Elias still has it. 

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” Elias sighs, “though that doesn’t mean I’m pleased you let it rampage through the place.” He blinks, lifts a hand to rub at his eyes briefly, and then finally turns his attention to Peter properly. “I gather the Distortion has caught it up. Whether it’s imprisoned it, or perhaps let it out elsewhere - I don’t know. But it’s not really my primary concern.” 

“Clearly.” Peter adds milk to his tea, takes a sip. It’s fine. It’s not - _right_ , but that’s fine too. “Why am I here, Elias?” 

“I really can’t say. You were in Portsmouth yesterday, you could always go back there,” Elias replies smoothly, and Peter stifles a sigh. So, it’s going to be like that. Half-truths and non-answers. And that tacit little reminder that like this Elias can watch him, _is_ watching him.

“Why am I _here_ , Elias?” he repeats firmly. 

“Because I’m not done with you, as I’ve already said.” 

“And?”

“I told you it was time to go, and you followed me.” 

Right. Yes, he had done that, hadn’t he? Peter’s tea is cooling rapidly in his hands and he takes another sip. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he admits, and Elias just nods as if that’s perfectly obvious. 

“Well, no. But you _can_ still feed your god, so you’re not without purpose.” 

Peter rubs his thumb over the edge of his mug, feeling a little bump where the paint is slightly thicker, digging his nail around it to try and chip it off. Wilful destruction, as Elias would call it. Pulling at loose threads, picking at tears, pressing at straining, cracking glass. 

“How _is_ your Archivist?” 

Elias doesn’t have to look _away_ from somebody when he casts his gaze elsewhere, but he does, usually. His eyes stay fixed on Peter’s as he smiles, tilts his head a little. “Settling in. He’ll be hungry in a few days, and I’m curious to see what he intends to do about that.” 

The conclusion, then - Elias has been watching his little Archivist for the past two hours. Peter doesn’t have the words to articulate why that frustrates him so he just takes another sip. “Where is he?” 

“You’re asking about as many questions as him these days,” Elias says, and sounds _fond_ about it. Something of Peter’s aggravation must show in his face because Elias shrugs, turns his eyes to the wall again. “Scotland - the Highlands. Not too far from Dounie, if that means anything to you.” 

“Not much,” Peter admits. “Been up that way a few times myself, though, shooting.” 

“Oh?” Peter sees his smile in profile, an amused little twitch of his lips. “All in tweeds, were you?” 

“Not quite. But a lot of the rest of them were.” There’s no point in not _having_ all that money without testing out the pastimes that go with it. Horse racing holds little interest for him though he doesn’t mind the gambling, will still find himself at a casino from time to time. Yachting and so on is too much glitter and not enough _substance_. Shooting, fishing, hiking - all of that, Peter can appreciate. “A brace of partridge and some salmon, quite diverting really. Better once I avoided the beaters and all of that nonsense and got into the thick of it myself.” 

“You’re lucky you weren’t shot yourself on the outskirts,” Elias says with the air of someone who _knows better_ , and Peter snorts. 

“Oh, am I offending your sense of propriety? You’re not a hunter.” 

“God, no. Hated it,” Elias mutters. “But it was part of the circuit, you know - one hunts in the winter, and reels, and in the summer there are garden parties and the races. It was just what one _did_.” 

“Sounds ghastly. I don’t think I’d have made much of a gentleman back in your day.” Elias just shakes his head at that, placing his fingers against the outside of his coffee cup and then standing to make himself a fresh one. 

“No, you wouldn’t. You don’t have enough of a sense of duty.”

That stings. Peter scowls into his tea and sets the mug down too hard on the counter, gets some satisfaction back from the way Elias’ jaw tenses minutely at the sudden noise. “Well. While we’re on the topic of duty,” he mutters, “what _is_ your Archivist up to in Scotland?” 

Elias finishes making his coffee in silence, clearly thinking - always _thinking_ about something. It’s exhausting to watch him. It must be even more tiring to be him. There are bags bruised under his eyes and Peter can’t say if Elias slept last night or not, wonders whether he’ll end up wearing himself right through before this damn Ritual of his starts to bear fruit. 

“Hiding,” he says eventually. “Fussing over Martin.” 

“Ah, yes.” Peter feels the inevitable irritation of having lost a victim but it’s more than that, really. Another believer. Bets and wagers aside, he could have been _perfect_. “And how’s he?” 

Elias tips his head back, pursing his lips. “I - hm. So far as I can see, he forgets that he is _visible_. That he can be seen, and heard. Every time Jon touches him, he jumps out of his skin. He goes on a lot of walks, but he doesn’t want to wander far enough away that he can’t see the cottage, so he paces between the cottage and the edge of the fields and back. He has nightmares. Jon spends most of his time watching him.” 

There’s a peculiar blankness to Elias’ voice when he says that, but when he turns to Peter he’s smiling. “If you want detail regarding his motivations or his emotional state I’m afraid you’ll have to ask Jon for a statement.” 

Peter makes a face, shoves his hands into his pockets. Elias’ pet has fled the Institute, run up to the other end of the country to hide his face in Martin’s shirt, and still Elias seems so _proud_ of him. 

“We could have avoided all of this if you hadn’t thrown a tantrum,” Elias adds, and Peter shrugs. 

“He was half-mine anyway.” 

“Yes. But he was Jon’s first.” 

Isn’t _that_ telling. Elias is protective over his Archivist, yes, but his assistants too. More ants for his nest, more hands for the doing. He isn’t inclined to ascribe possessions to others unless he doesn’t care about them at all - or, unless he cares enough for Jon to allow him dominion over parts of his little world. It’s likely that. Elias rarely does things that aren’t deliberate. 

“Are you ever going to tell me why you pulled me out?” he asks, and Elias rolls his eyes, turns to face him properly and pins him with a sharp look. 

“Are you ever going to tell me what happened when he followed you?” 

Stalemate. Peter looks away first, rolling his shoulders back, feeling the joints creak. Heavy bones, heavy eyes, and it’s wearing to keep up this particular piece of his armour - but it’s worth it. It galls Elias not to know something, and Peter doesn’t want to tell him. Bad enough that _he_ has to know about his moment of loyalty, the last thing he needs is Elias knowing it too.

“S’pose not,” he admits, and watches Elias turn back to his coffee, head tilting up at the sound of a sharp little rap. It’s coming - inexplicably - from the bedroom, and Peter realises what it is a fraction of a second after Elias, stifling a groan. 

“You might have told me that we were expecting company,” he mutters, picking up his tea to follow Elias to the bedroom, leaning in the doorway as Elias opens up the curtains and the door to his balcony, Simon Fairchild balancing on the wrought-iron railing like a tightrope walker, his cane slung rakishly over his shoulder, hat knocked askew by his fall. 

He doesn’t look quite as decrepit as he usually does. The wrinkles are smoother around his eyes, and whilst normally he’s a tiny, pink skeleton of a man, today he seems only to be at the upper end of middle aged. It had taken a _while_ for Peter to get his head around that, how a man who’d been alive for five centuries could pick his age like a new tie in the morning. 

“Well, it’s like _this_ , Peter,” Simon had said, spreading his hands on the table, always glad of the chance to lecture. “In the scheme of human experience, yes, I am _very_ old. Very old indeed. And if I let that weigh on me for too long my body will just crumble under the strain of it. But in the scheme of the universe, why, I’m a mere babe in arms. Not even that. A blip! An amoeba, in fact, and if I start thinking about _that_ then I’m liable to just dissemble into atoms.” 

“Not a bad thought,” Peter had muttered, because Simon is _chatty_ , and prone to mischief, and Peter knows better than to trust him with anything _too_ important. 

“It is curious,” Elias had remarked, eyes still on his cards. “One would imagine that such manipulations would be the purview of the Flesh, not the Vast.” 

“Ah! Well, we are all of us just cells, and most of _those_ are just empty space. All of what we are is _tiny_ in comparison to the space we imagine we actually take up. So I hang the _physical_ side and play around with the space between, and that seems to smooth out a bit of the cragginess.” 

Talking to Simon gives Peter a headache. He’d glared at his cards for a second and bid two no trumps. He’d have played rummy or poker, for preference, but Elias is fond of bridge. Of _course_ he is. The unpredictable nature of the bidding, the satisfaction of a played round come good, counting the suits until everything lines itself up as predicted. The saying goes that spouses ought never to play bridge on the same team, as it’s the fastest way to divorce. Naturally, they always play together, the two of them, Fairchild making up the other side, sometimes with one of his new protegés (family members, he calls them, and it never fails to make Peter shudder), sometimes with Rayner or another of their ilk. More often than not Peter ends up playing dummy, leaning back on his chair and watching Elias set the tiny table to rights - it’s an easy enough way to spend an evening, at least, and it lets somebody else take the burden of conversation.

The upshot is that Simon’s face looks as old as he wants it to (more or less), and he takes immense pleasure in the old man act these days. Perhaps next month he’ll change his mind and go back to being young. The science is nonsense no matter what Simon says about _atoms_ , but that doesn’t really matter either. The fact is, Simon thinks it should work, and so it does, just like Dominguez and her dark sun. It’s fortunate, really, that most of them are so unimaginative.

“Simon,” Elias greets, and Simon hops down from the balcony, sauntering into the bedroom. 

“Hallo, Elias. How’s life as a free man?” 

“Much the same as before,” Elias smiles. He seems to like Simon well enough, in small doses. Peter can’t see the appeal himself, but then there is _more_ to Fairchild than meets the eye. Once one gets over the whistling, capering fool of a man there is a depth to him that is dark and horrifying and speaks of what atrocities he might have seen over the last few centuries, which ones he might have contributed to. Perhaps that’s what Elias appreciates so much - then again, it might always be nostalgia. Elias isn’t immune to that, either.

“Ah, and _here’s_ the patient!” Simon says cheerfully, reaching up with his cane to tap gently at Peter’s chest. “You’re looking much more hale and hearty than last time I saw you.” 

“I - when, Bermuda?” Peter asks, baffled, and Simon shakes his head. 

“No, no. All laid up like an invalid with Elias set to read you the last rites.” He nods towards the bed and Peter frowns, looking to Elias for some sort of an explanation. 

“Fairchild was here? The night before last?” 

“Oh, no. Last Wednesday, it was,” Simon replies brightly, already out and on his way to the living room. Elias closes the door to the balcony and raises his eyebrows at Peter, clearly expecting a question. As well he bloody might.

“How long was I asleep for, Elias?” 

“About a week. On and off - you woke a few times but seemed largely delirious. Feverish.” 

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” 

“Because you didn’t ask. And I have more pressing concerns than giving you a play-by-play of your return to the land of the living.” 

He walks past to join Simon in the living room and Peter stares at the bed for a moment. It shouldn’t be so unsettling to have missed seven days where he’d assumed he’d missed only one - on top of whatever time he’d spent in the Lonely to begin with. What does that bring it up to, two weeks? Far more time than he’d expected. Not that he’s missed out on any activity but it’s a strange, hurtling lurch to his world. 

Elias gives him vertigo far more than Fairchild. Peter doesn’t have the words to express why he minds this so much, only that he _does_ , but it’s not a conversation for now. He follows them, sitting down on the sofa to finish his tea. This might just be a social call, but if Elias had summoned Fairchild over when he was asleep - well, Peter doesn’t especially know what to think of any of this. 

“I think,” Simon says, apparently apropos of nothing, giving a little shrug, “that the theory holds water. Hard to prove, though.” 

“It does set an interesting precedent,” Elias admits, clearly frustrated, brow pinched. “It’s - well, fascinating, yes, but _dangerous_.” 

Peter opens his mouth to ask for further details, closes it again. He’s feeling tense and snappish and he can’t think of a way to phrase his interjection that isn’t _don’t talk about me like I’m not here_ , and that’s just not going to suit because he’s actually quite _fond_ of that. Instead he lets himself settle against the cushions and pretends that the soft rustle of fabric by his ear is the static of the Lonely, that he can fade out of this altogether. 

“Well, do you think he’d try it on you? That _would_ be interesting. Actually it rather puts everything out of balance,” Simon seems gleeful at the prospect, circling his fingertips over the top of his cane, and Elias just nods. 

“All in the context. Things so often are. _Is_ there a precedent for this?” 

“Not for a very long time. Long before your time, Elias,” Simon replies, settling his cane between his knees and leaning forwards a little in the armchair he’s seated in. “And standards of communication being what they are it’s not especially easy to verify, you know how people like to _exaggerate_. I say, Peter-” he turns towards him and Peter blinks at him, eyebrows raised. “When the Archivist had at you in the mists, how did you feel afterwards?” 

The fact that Simon’s questions don’t have any of the weight of compulsion doesn’t make them any less aggravating. Peter purses his lips, looks away, wonders why it’s relevant, wonders if he can escape the question altogether. He can feel Elias’ eyes on him. 

“Does it matter?” he sighs, and Simon shrugs. 

“Only as much as _anything_ matters. Come, don’t let’s stand on ceremony about this, allow an old man his curiosity.” Simon grins. 

“ _Why_ does it matter?” Peter asks, not at all comfortable with the two of them watching him like that. Simon can normally be relied upon to drop a subject if he has to pursue it for more than a few minutes at a time but he seems positively gleeful about this one. Elias is - impassive, of course. But he hasn’t blinked, not once, and it’s rare to feel his attention so fully when he has so many other things to be watching. 

“It matters,” Elias says finally, the words pulled from him as if he’d been the one compelled, “because it has very real ramifications. Not just for my own plans, but for all of us. And for your return to normalcy.” 

Peter looks at his hands, ponders the idea of normalcy. He’s still reeling from the idea of losing time entirely, which is difficult enough. Time matters little to him but to have lost it feels all wrong. It makes him wonder what Elias might not be telling him, and as such he is deeply reluctant to part with any information that Elias doesn’t already have. Bargaining chips, collateral. While he can’t ask his Archivist Peter has leverage, and he’s loath to give it up. 

Still. It’s not as if the information he has on this matter is going to be especially useful. 

“I- well, once the _pain_ stopped, I was sitting on the shoreline,” he says finally, reluctantly, words leaden and strange-tasting in his mouth. “I felt - calm enough, I suppose.” 

“Afraid?” Elias probes gently. Peter wonders if either of them would stop him if he left the room. 

“Yes,” he says finally. “Yes, I- I felt-”

“A sudden desire for company?” Simon suggests. Peter hears the quick little intake of breath Elias takes, hears the sound of him opening his mouth to speak. He hears it only very dimly through the sound of his heartbeat in his ears.

“- _ter!_ ” 

There’s a hand on his arm. It’s warm, and nothing else is. Peter is shivering, and he has his hand bunched in fabric - Simon’s jumper, his brain supplies helpfully, with Simon hanging from it, blue-lipped, grinning like a demon despite the fact that he’s dangling nearly over a foot from the ground. 

“Peter,” Elias repeats firmly, and Peter realises that for the first time he can remember, Elias sounds _rattled_. “Pay attention. Look around.” 

Peter can make out the broad strokes of the living room, but it’s not easy through the mist that’s clouding in thick and fast. His fingertips are blue. The call around his neck is so cold it’s burning his skin.

“This is _fascinating_ ,” Simon says cheerfully, teeth chattering, frost forming on his eyelashes. “I _do_ wonder what might happen if I dropped you now. How far _can_ one fall in the Lonely?” 

“We are not _yet_ in the Lonely.” Elias is shivering too, doing his best to hide it. He tightens his grip on Peter’s arm, trying to catch his attention. “That’s enough, now. Put him down.” 

That’s probably sensible. The satisfaction of casting Fairchild into the mists is somewhat negated by what is quite obviously concerning Elias, the likelihood that none of them will find their way out again afterwards. 

Although, would that be so awful? Three servants of the Entities gone all at once. No more Panopticon, no more of any of this. 

“Peter.” He does turn, then, to look at Elias’ face, drawn and worried. 

The mists uncurl. Slow and reluctant, the tender touch of the One Alone withdrawing from Elias’ living room. Peter feels very, very tired. He lets go of Simon rather than put him down properly but a short fall is a long fall is a fall all the same, and Simon settles easily against the carpet, straightening himself out and laughing. 

“Do you know, that’s the first time I’ve ever been subjected to that?” he says mildly, apparently unperturbed by the idea of a slow death in the Forsaken. “Not often one gets a new experience, at my age. _Fascinating_. Elias - I take it you’ll be handling the explanations?” 

“I think,” Elias’ hand is still on his arm, white-knuckled, “that’s probably necessary, yes. Will you keep up the search?”

“Oh, yes. I’m curious, now.” Simon gives Peter a rakish little salute, scooping his cane back up and twirling it like a baton in his fingers. “Be well, you two. See you shortly.” He leaves. There is a click - the balcony door opening, closing again. 

Elias isn’t the type to dissolve into hysterics after a touch of fear, but his hands are shaking when he lets go of Peter’s arm, and Peter isn’t entirely sure that that’s to do with the cold. Perhaps he hadn’t been quite so sure that Peter could take them back after all. Or - irrespective of his ability - that he would. 

It seems like his attitude to his own mortality is a little tidal. He cares, he doesn’t. The differentiator being whether or not it’s on his terms. Curious, really - he hasn’t been in control of the path of his own life for a long time. Even now, he is a spectator to Elias’ machinations. He expects Elias to be angry - he is angry far more often than he is _frightened_ \- but instead Elias catches Peter’s fingers, draws him down onto the sofa with him. 

“Explanations?” Peter asks numbly, watching their intertwined fingers, Elias setting to - for reasons best known to himself - rubbing the blood back into his digits. 

“The theory I’m working on thus far,” Elias sighs, “is that rather than kill you, Jon pulled knowledge directly from your head.” 

“Well - yes. That’s what he does, isn’t it? Pull out information?” 

“Extract it, yes, but I think he may have-” Elias’ lips move for a moment while he searches for the right words, “I think he may have pulled information out _entirely_. Left you ignorant, to an extent, of your own abilities.” 

“I- I see.” 

“It’s not complete, obviously. But it provides a passable theory for why you were unable to leave the Lonely by yourself. And why you still retain a sort of muscle memory to the whole process - not least when you lose your temper.” He gives him a pointed little look but Peter isn’t going to take that from _Elias_ of all people. 

He gives the new information due consideration, curling his fingers in Elias’ grip a little as he feels sensation returning to them, tingling. On the one hand, it’s a relief. The One Alone hasn’t judged him unworthy. That is a hope that rushes through Peter, and his fingers twitch as he considers holding onto the call at his neck, decides against it, stays as he is. 

It gives him a new purpose. What has been forgotten can be relearned, in theory. It gives him far more of a reason to hate the Archivist for robbing him of this and making him useless. It makes him-

Oh. 

It makes him look at Elias and realise the _implications_.

“You think he could do it to others.”

“Yes.”

“To you?” 

“I - don’t know.” 

“Is that why you’ve been keeping your distance from him?” 

“It’s one of the reasons.” 

Peter leans back against the sofa cushions, tries to consider the effects of Elias being subjected to the same treatment. Being left blind (comparatively) and caught in the one body, human, helpless. Quite honestly, he doesn’t know _how_ he feels about that. 

“Is that why you came to fetch me?” he asks next, and feels Elias’ fingers still on his. He doesn’t answer. Peter didn’t expect him to. “I suppose we should feel lucky that it’s _this_ Archivist who’s showing this, and not Gertrude,” he adds, and Elias smiles. 

“Oh, she’d have been a terror.” Even now, even having murdered her with his own hands, he sounds strangely fond of her. Peter grunts, shifts a little in place, considers standing up and swiftly decides that if he tries it he’s liable to pass out with his head still spinning as it is.

Avatars are a funny lot. Whatever the Entity, methods differ. Some Hunt Avatars transform into feral beasts for the chase, otherwise stay more or less human and just pace and pace to run their prey to ground, others favour the ambush, and all end up with _something_ to match their preference. The fear is all the same, in the end. The fact that Jon has come up with something new that could so thoroughly derail Elias’ plans is really just bad luck. It’s almost amusing.

“So you have a rogue Archivist that might be able to - at his worst - forcibly de-Avatar people, is that about the shape of it?” 

“More or less, yes, and perhaps more besides. My hope is that he thinks you’re dead, and isn’t paying enough attention to Know otherwise,” Elias sighs. “Based on his conversations with Martin he is doing his utmost not to Know anything he doesn’t have to, which is - fortunate. There’s no reason why he ought to suspect himself of having this sort of power.” 

But it only takes a moment to Know this sort of thing, and Peter can understand Elias’ reservations. He doesn’t know what would happen if Jon went up against him. They are both powerful. Elias is taking the potential threat very seriously and that’s telling enough. How _does_ one plan for this? 

“What’s your plan?” Peter asks, and Elias closes his eyes, tips himself sideways to rest his head against his shoulder. Hm. Peter’s hand finds its way around his shoulders and he holds him close. He is providing comfort to somebody trying his very best to bring about a horrendous end of the world, someone he ought to be thwarting at every turn. He is providing comfort to his sometime-husband who is still looking to him to do so, much as he might not admit it. 

“It continues more or less in the same way,” Elias says finally. “For now, at any rate. After the Ritual, Jon will have to see sense.” 

Peter knows enough about Elias’ Ritual to know that it will imbue him with abilities or powers of some kind - or so he thinks - but it is nearly impossible to hypothesise what a Ritual will actually _do_. It’s stepping into the unknown, unprecedented, pure theory. That’s not especially bothersome for him but for Elias who prides himself on knowing everything, seeing everything, it must be-

“Tiring, yes,” Elias mutters, and Peter rolls his eyes. 

“Get out of my head.” 

“I can’t help it if you’re thinking loudly.” 

Peter snorts, presses a kiss to the top of Elias’ head, strokes gentle fingers through his hair and thinks about the mists engulfing them again. It seems a kinder way to go than most. He is loath to think much more than he has to about Simon’s question, but the worry is-

Well, he was right. 

Which makes sense. The commonality that all victims of the Lonely have is terror of the solitude no matter how acclimated they might be to a type of isolation in their normal lives. There’s no reason to expect that Peter, robbed of the knowledge of his place in the Lonely, might feel any different. It casts an interesting light on the relationship to his Entity, but then Simon has long-theorised that their powers, their Rituals, are more to do with _their_ intent than the Entities themselves. If he doesn’t know that he ought not to be afraid, what business is it of the Forsaken to remind him?

“You’re still thinking much too loudly,” Elias sighs, not opening his eyes. That doesn’t mean he’s not watching, necessarily, and Peter eyes the portrait over the fireplace with mild distaste for a moment before looking down at Elias again.

“That coffee of yours doesn’t seem to have done you any good,” he says mildly, watching his brow furrow, the skin around his eyes tightening with irritation. 

“Needs must, Peter.” 

“Must they? What are you doing right now but _watching_? Get some sleep.” 

“Later.” 

“Always _later_ with you.” Peter rolls his eyes. It seems that one of the great tragedies of Elias Bouchard’s life is that his mechanism for obtaining immortality has not robbed him of the need for sleep. 

Peter is not really inclined to think about the needs of others. But God knows right now he doesn’t want to think about _his_ needs, about his place in the world. It is quiet enough in Elias’ house but that damn grandfather clock is ticking and it sounds like it’s knocking on the walls of his skull, and it seems that they might both be in need of a distraction. He considers hooking his arm under Elias’ legs, carrying him to bed, pinning him to the mattress - a frenzy of activity and then rest, Christ, some _rest_ \- but before he can act on it Elias is up and across the room, walking off into the kitchen without another word. 

Right. 

* * * 

Elias does sleep, in the end. Reluctantly, begrudgingly, Peter all but pulling him to bed and settling him, fingers in his hair, lips at his neck. It hasn’t escaped Peter’s notice that Elias is being - if not exactly nice, _gentle_ with him. It might be pity, much as it galls Peter’s pride to even admit the possibility. It might be a distraction, Elias playing nice to divert his attention from whatever is looming over them all. Whatever it is, it leaves him the sleepless one, staring at the ceiling and listening to the sound of Elias’ breathing. 

However many years of on-and-off marriage and he is still unused to sleeping by Elias’ side. He ought to be pleased by that, really, a testament to how adroitly he has navigated solitude and companionship, on and off, push and pull. He feels distinctly neutral about it, if a little curious to watch Elias unguarded, for once. He is quiet in his sleep, and very still, apparently untroubled by dreams or nightmares. He sleeps like the dead. More than once Peter has set his fingers in front of Elias’ mouth to check that he is still breathing after all. 

Two days, now. At this point, normally, things would have come to some manner of a head. Peter would have pinned Elias to a wall or a bookshelf, Elias would have put him on his knees with some sharp words and a sharper smile, there would have been something - _anything_ \- to focus on other than the awful tension that is still creeping over the back of his neck. Instead, here they are. Soft touches, gentle words, worry and weariness on Elias’ handsome face. 

It is worse than any fight they’ve ever had. 

Peter can’t even put his burdens down to concern for Elias’ wellbeing, really. It would be easier, better for the world at large, if he were to wrap his arms around Elias and disappear them both into the Forsaken. One less Ritual to worry about. A few centuries of work up in smoke, and the world safe until the next ambitious lot. Peter has never really considered himself responsible for the fate of the world at large but he is, right now, in a position to simply - stop it. The whole thing. All of it. 

Which is to say nothing of the fact that he can’t trust Elias to tell him the whole truth. 

Peter is shaken out of his thoughts by a little knock at the door to the balcony, brow furrowing. He rises out of bed, slow and careful, turning back to check he hasn’t Elias woken, watching him sigh and press his face against the pillow, shifting but not waking. Peter tugs on his trousers and his heavy coat, opening the door to see Simon Fairchild sitting on top of the balcony. 

“Ah. There you are.” 

“Strange hour to come visiting. Were you hoping for Elias?” Peter asks, stepping out into the cold and closing the door behind him. 

“You know, I hadn’t really decided which of you I might speak to. I thought I’d let fate decide,” Simon replies cheerfully, swinging his legs. The sky seems very low above them, clear but starless, scant clouds moving like wraiths, fog over a dark lake. Peter thinks about calling them down, puts his hands in his pockets instead and brings out the cigarettes from the harbour. “Filthy habit,” Simon murmurs, and Peter can’t tell if he means that as a rebuke or a sort of praise. 

To give Simon his due, he’s always been good enough about shutting up when the time is right for it. Peter lights his cigarette, breathes in, breathes out. He can hear the wind whipping through the trees and the sound prickles at the back of his neck. 

“I was wondering,” Simon says eventually, head tipped back towards the sky, leaning so far that he’s in danger of falling off the balcony altogether, “if you knew what Elias was cooking up in that head of his.” 

Peter scoffs, looks away, follows the slow passage of a car down the street and narrows his eyes at the glare from the headlights. “Would it matter?” 

“Oh, rather.” Simon isn’t smiling. “He’s a bit off, these days. I’d assumed he was just fretting over your life, but he’s-” he looks towards the door, hums in consideration. “I haven’t seen him like this in _quite_ some time.” 

Peter rolls his eyes and doesn’t reply, as ever unwilling to be reminded of the long, long history that predates him. 

“If his little Archivist is running riot and tearing things out of people’s heads then that’s quite an omen of things to come. Don’t you think?” Peter doesn’t look over, keeps his eyes focused on the coils of smoke from his cigarette, the shadows of trees against the houses over the road. “Peter.” 

“I was under the impression,” Peter says quietly, “that you didn’t take much of an interest in this sort of thing. I thought you had a sort of-” he waves his hand, grimacing, trying to unpick the words from his head, “academic curiosity about it.” 

“Oh, I do! I very much do. This isn’t to do with Entities, per se. Just Elias.” Peter frowns, looks at Simon, says nothing. Simon swings his legs again, lifting his hands in a little shrug. “Lovely chap, Elias, I’m very fond of him, have been for a while. He’s worked _awfully_ hard to get to where he is and we’re all very proud of him, I’m sure, it’s just that - well. If I were to pick somebody to rule the world, I’m not _sure_ he’d be my first choice. But perhaps he would be yours.” 

Peter bristles despite himself and flicks his cigarette away. There is every chance that Elias and Simon have some manner of wager on the go. That Simon is just meddling, testing for some reaction or another. That Elias is listening to every word of this. 

Well, to hell with the both of them. 

“Sorry, Simon. Can’t help you.” 

Simon tilts his head, a quick birdlike little motion, and then shrugs and rises to his feet. “No, I don’t suppose you can, can you? Alright. I’ll be off, then - oh! Before I go-” he reaches out whip-fast and Peter flinches, ready for a lurching, hurtling drop, breath stolen from his lungs-

None of that, not this time. He _is_ falling, but it’s slow, it’s more like sinking into deep, deep water. His lungs are full of it, dark and cold. He can’t breathe. His eyes close and he is - small, so small. One tiny body in a huge and lonely sea, so deep that the waves can’t move him, sinking down to wherever the bottom might be. He is drowning and he is totally, utterly, blissfully alone. 

The return to reality is jolting, the dim light from the streetlamps stinging his eyes as he flinches and coughs and splutters, trying to acclimate his lungs to the harsh practicalities of oxygen. Simon’s hand is still on his shoulder. 

“Better?” he asks brightly. Peter prepares to spit some terse response and then stops, thinks about it. 

He _does_ feel a little better. There’s a little core of cold and melancholy that feels sated by that, the balm of solitude when every part of this house is so very wrapped up in Elias. 

“Yes,” he mumbles, sticking out his hand to catch himself against the balcony as a wave of dizziness rolls through him. “You-”

“Thank me another time. Bye for now,” Simon pats Peter’s cheek with one wrinkled hand and waves as he swandives from the balcony, falling upwards, his frail body tossed like a plastic bag in the wind. It is a long time before Peter returns to bed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love evil grandpa with my whole heart


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wave crests. Sometimes not making a choice is a choice in itself.

It is not the first time Elias has woken tied to a bed, but that doesn’t make it any less surprising. 

He is blindfolded. That’s nothing more than an inconvenience, really, two fewer eyes to see out of, but it gives him some clue as to Peter’s mood. Curious. Elias flips his gaze outside of himself to a picture on the wall. It’s a watercolour, inoffensive, sweeps of colour and the barest suggestion of something that might be a coastline, but there are eyes hidden within it in brushstrokes and shadows and tiny pinpricks of light. He’d have preferred something more portrait-like but Peter would never knowingly sleep in a room full of other eyes, so this will have to do. 

Just as he suspected, he seems to be tied to the headboard by his wrists, soft black rope looped over and over. Peter is nowhere to be seen, and that’s rather more unusual. Elias curls and uncurls his fingers against his palms, considering the tension in the rope. He can turn his wrists, a little. Too much of that and he’ll rub the skin raw. There’s an appeal to that, sometimes, something deliberately painful, something compulsive. Elias has had over two centuries to learn self-control, but that doesn’t mean he’s especially good at it. 

He considers finding Peter, decides against it. It’s no especial hardship being here - after all, he can still See. He’ll give it a little while for Peter to show his face, and in the meantime, he can turn his attention to more important things. 

His Archivist is hungry. There’s a leanness in his face, now, under the stubble that’s growing into a scruffy and unkempt beard. Elias itches to shave it. He will, in time - he’ll draw Jon close and drag a razor against his cheeks, his jaw, his neck, whisper hands against his skin like a sculptor against clay and make him new. Jon won’t wonder if Elias will cut him, because he’ll Know. There is so much that he is so close to Knowing. For now, though, he seems to be working very hard on maintaining his ignorance even at the cost of his physical wellbeing. He picks at the food that Martin makes him as if it’s adequate sustenance, and asks questions like _how are things at the village_ and _did they have eggs_ as if he doesn’t have the answers to that - and to more - and to everything - at his fingertips. 

Jon tries so very, very hard to be human. He exerts an inhuman effort to do so, and it is straining him. Elias watches the bags grow under his eyes and the way he curls into Martin’s side in the night and wonders whether Jon considers his humanity to be worth the suffering, paying with pain for further pain. 

It’s of no consequence. Whether Jon likes it or not, he _must_ feed. Martin’s feeble attempts at nourishing him are admirable - he has given him two stories, now, things that Jon missed when he was teetering on the knife-edge between death and becoming, borne the resultant nightmares with an odd sort of stoicism - but ultimately useless. Elias knows what Jon needs, as he has always known what Jon needs, and he will give it to him. 

“Bit rude of you to start without me.” Peter’s voice cuts through Elias’ thoughts like steel wire though he sounds amiable enough. Elias sighs, settles back into his body and the darkness of the blindfold, feels the blood pumping through him. Seeing is as easy as breathing but it is difficult to See and to _feel_ all at once. Beholding is not much concerned with feeling. 

Elias, though, is fond of feeling the warmth of Peter’s hand as it curls around his ankle, broad palm sweeping up his leg, his thigh. It is worth sacrificing a few moments of vision to enjoy it properly.

“Rude of you to leave me alone to do so,” he replies evenly, bringing his other leg up to rest his foot against the mattress, staring into the darkness. He feels a dip where Peter settles on the bed, leans in to press a kiss to his bent knee, his thigh, rubs his beard against his hip. “Is there an occasion I’ve forgotten? I haven’t missed an anniversary, have I?” 

“How on _earth_ should I know?” Peter scoffs, a cool puff of breath across Elias’ stomach. “No, this isn’t commemorative.” 

“No?” Elias tilts his blindfolded head. “Then what?” 

Peter is quiet for just slightly too long. Elias’ brow furrows and he looks outside of himself again - not through the painting, but the nearest pair of eyes which, this time, are Peter’s. It won’t go unnoticed but it’s the most convenient way to confirm that, yes, Peter is just _watching him_. 

In the next moment Elias’ vision is darkened by Peter pressing his fingertips into his own eyes, hissing in through his teeth sharply at the sensation which, he has told Elias, is like a _nest of fucking bees in my skull_. 

Telling him that it’s a _hive_ not a _nest_ hadn’t improved his mood last time. Peter can be so testy. This time is no exception, and Elias’ endeavours are rewarded by Peter shifting again on the bed, taking hold of Elias’ bent knee and pressing it up, further up, almost to his shoulder until he grimaces at the strain on his muscles. Elias Bouchard had been reasonably flexible, yes, but in his _thirties_ , not his _fifties_. 

“ _Peter_ -”

“Keep your eyes out of my head, then,” Peter replies mildly. He’s still pressing Elias’ leg up and the stretch is softening into something warm, soaking into his muscles in a way that will leave him stiff and aching for _days_ , the bastard. Elias considers just kicking Peter in the nose and having done. 

“What’s your game?” he asks instead and Peter chuckles, turning his kisses to the inside of his leg now, from his knee to his thigh, touching his teeth to the tender skin there. 

“Really, Elias, I’d have thought it would be obvious,” he teases, and Elias rolls his eyes, relaxes a little against the pillows. The rope, the blindfold, Peter’s aggravating _casualness_ about it all. Something’s wrong. But it is - predictably - more difficult to concentrate on that sort of granular detail when he can feel sure, calloused fingers wrapping around him, giving a slow stroke from base to tip that sends heat rushing down his spine and coiling in his belly. “Or has it been that long?” Peter asks a moment later, and Elias snorts, doesn’t answer. 

Another one of those unspoken things. Elias doesn’t know if Peter seeks out the company of others when they’re apart, brief and impersonal encounters. Perhaps he does. He doesn’t much care. He isn’t prone to that sort of jealousy. He rather suspects that Peter _is_ , much as he would be loath to admit it, but it’s just another thing that they don’t discuss. The ley-lines of their strange dance are well-established by now, and Elias can settle into that familiarity with ease, feeling at the boundaries, two positive magnets pressed together and inevitably driven to repel. 

“It’s hardly a priority,” he says finally and Peter moves again, lets go of Elias’ leg and settles himself between his thighs where Elias can rest his legs against his broad shoulders, feel the vibration of his laughter. 

“Oh, yes. Busy running the world. Busy ending it,” he mutters. There’s something hollow in his tone. Elias wants to dig his fingers into it, pull out whatever truths Peter is hiding from him there. He switches his eyes to the wall again to satisfy the urge to See, tracks his eyes down the shifting muscles in Peter’s back, the way his fingers press into his thighs as he bends his head to press kisses to the base of his cock. Teasing him. _Why_ is he teasing him? 

Peter is fond of dragging noises out of him, yes, takes inordinate pleasure in a perceived loss of Elias’ control. Normally he chooses to do so via rather more violent means, soft touches and tender moans veering far too close to intimacy for his tastes. Today, for whatever reason, he seems to be taking his time, and Elias shivers when he feels Peter’s lips close around him, oh-so-gentle, sucking for just a second before letting him go, cock slapping against his belly. 

“Pay attention, Elias,” Peter chides. Ah, there it is. He pays attention too, sometimes. Elias wants to ask how, which particular tell it is that lets Peter know his mind is wandering elsewhere. He lets a lazy smile spread across his face instead and outright laughs at the reproving pinch to his hip Peter gives him, all nails, little half-moons stark white for a second and then deepening to red, to purple. 

“Oh, apologies,” he says softly, letting himself slip into the darkness again so he can enjoy the pain properly. He never used to be so fond of that - scratches and bites, bruises and blood - but then he had been far more careful with his body when he’d thought it indisposable. He knows better, now. Peter will hurt him, but only so far as Elias allows himself to be hurt - and the same must be true the other way, presumably. “Perhaps if you gave me something to pay attention _to_ -”

“Impatient,” Peter mutters, and Elias doesn’t need to see to know he’s rolling his eyes, indulgence dropping swiftly into irritation. So it goes. Peter plays at affability with strangers but his temper is never far below the surface, and Elias does so like to dip his hand into those dark and rolling waters, to grab whatever is sharp and dangerous and pull it out into the light. “Someone ought to have taught you better manners by now.” 

“Someone, yes,” Elias agrees. There’s something familiar in that comment - who was it. Mordechai? No. He’d had little patience for discourtesy but his methods of reproof were rarely so vocal. Perhaps it had been Barnabas. Perhaps Aloysius, or somebody else entirely. The words linger in his head but the faces are more malleable, blurred like overexposed photographs. He’ll remember it later, no doubt. 

“S’pose I have to do everything myself,” Peter sighs, as if it’s a hardship, and Elias rolls his eyes and lifts his head a little to look blindly down at where Peter’s head must be. 

“You were the one that took the decision to incapacitate me,” he says pointedly, and Peter grins - Elias can feel the stretch of his lips against his stomach, so close to where he wants them most. Dry lips and sharp, sharp teeth. Elias curls his fingers against the rope where it binds him to the headboard, holds on white-knuckled as Peter takes him into his mouth again and sucks - harder this time, forcing his head to fall back against the pillows. 

He is a slow learner, Peter, but he is dedicated. He’s spent enough time like this to know Elias’ body whether he wants to or not - well enough to pretend he _doesn’t_ , sometimes, to intentionally glance off to the side of every sensitive spot, to avoid each place that might make him groan. Today, though, he is applying himself, and Elias feels his breath leave him in a rush as he arches towards his mouth, feels broad hands flatten to his hips and pin him right back down again. 

Peter has a fondness for pinning him. To shelves and walls, over desks, to the bed. Perhaps it’s a facet of strength, that looming physicality that means he could break him at a touch. Perhaps it’s simply that he feels pinned down by Elias and feels the need to return the favour. Elias likes that thought. The old ball and chain, as it were. For all that Peter might like to consider himself a rock, an island, one thing alone in the world, he is a satellite, and he circles his way back to Elias sooner or later. 

Peter is cool to the touch but the inside of his mouth is all velvet heat, and Elias stifles a helpless sound as he feels himself bump against the back of Peter’s throat, swallowed down, Peter’s nose pressed to his stomach. He swallows around him and Elias bites off another moan, holds onto the rope and tries not to cry out as Peter _laughs_ around him, throat tightening as he tries to draw in the breath to do so, fluttering movements that make Elias’ fingers clench tight against the rope. 

If Elias were sitting up, he could put his hand against Peter’s throat to feel the shape of himself there. He’s done that before, had Peter under his desk for a while, kept nice and quiet and thoroughly ignored while Elias occupies himself with scheduling. It’s mutually beneficial; Peter fusses and whines about the indignity of it, but there’s a loneliness in being used and ignored, the sting of humiliation against the satisfaction of serving an insatiable patron, an unfeeling partner. Elias is very familiar with that sort of a conflict. He ought to be detached, cerebral, to eschew the mess of any sort of physicality, and yet there are few things so appealing to him as feeling pressed within his body, made to feel each bone and muscle and bruise. He casts himself outside of it so often that it is lovely to be fully constrained, vision narrowed to the pinpoint of his two physical eyes. He wants it, and he shouldn’t want it. 

He is - he knows - a poor servant. It is just Beholding’s bad luck that its cleverest acolyte has turned out to have the most personal investment in his own ambition. All will come good in the end, and Elias feels assured of mutual satisfaction. If the Eye is affronted that his aims are rarely selfless and in the service of the Watcher, well - then it may find itself another avatar that would do half as much, half as well, to further its reach. 

Peter pulls away and Elias lifts his head again, indignant, torn from his thoughts by the feel of cold air and a wrenching loss of sensation, pulling a little at the ropes that bind him from the headboard. He could undo them, if he wanted to, but that isn’t the _point_. Peter’s playing at something and Elias wants to know what. He strains his ears for the sound of the bedside drawer opening and lowers his head again, listening for the click of the bottle, the press of Peter’s fingers against him. 

“I’m not sure,” he says softly, “why you’ve gone to the trouble of tying me up.” 

“Oh?” Peter is rubbing tight little circles between his cheeks with one finger and Elias shifts, does his best to arch against the touch and bear down on it, bites his lip hard when Peter relents and presses his finger into him. Slow, so slow, what is he _doing_? “Seems like something to ask that Eye of yours.” 

“Peter-” Elias is growing tired of this. There’s a strange, simmering tension under his skin and he gasps as Peter crooks his finger, follows it swiftly with another, leans in to kiss him before he can finish his question. It’s probably for the best. Peter doesn’t much like being compelled and there’s really no telling how stubborn he’ll be on any given day. The last thing any of them need is to be cast into the Lonely because Peter’s lost his temper again. 

Elias is trying very hard not to worry too much about that, because in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t _matter_. He is mere days away from the apotheosis of all that he’s worked so hard for and Peter’s inability to walk through the One Alone is hardly his primary concern. The only part of that that might impact him is the idea of Jon ripping knowledge from the heads of Avatars and leaving them empty shells, mere humans, no longer fit for their purpose. That is a far more perturbing thought, and yet - and yet - seeing Peter shivering in the grip of the mists even as he held Simon aloft, so keen to rush headlong into his own oblivion -

Peter pulls his fingers out entirely and Elias huffs, narrowing his eyes behind the blindfold. 

“I don’t seem to be holding your attention much this morning,” he sighs, mock-rueful, and Elias is preparing a snappy retort when Peter presses three fingers into him hard, a brutal in-and-out that has Elias arching, breathless against the stretch and burn of too-much-too-soon, the sparks of pleasure crackling over his skin as he gasps through it, Peter speaking over him as if he can barely hear him. “Honestly, I try to do something nice for you and see where it gets me? Daydreaming all the way through it. A lesser man might be offended.” 

Elias doesn’t speak because he can’t, not past the sudden seal of Peter’s hand at his throat as he fucks him with his fingers, windpipe pressed flat with bruising force. He can’t move, can’t cry out, he is bound and absolutely at Peter’s mercy and it is a lurching shock when Peter just- stops. All of a sudden. His fingers still inside Elias, his hand at his throat still restricting his breath.

“Just one twist,” Peter says quietly, and Elias’ brow furrows. “Just one twist, and all your little plans go up in smoke.” Peter sounds almost wistful. Elias is silent, trembling with the need for air, lungs fluttering in his chest. They both know it to be true but it is not often that Peter says something like that so _gently_. It is the tenderness in his tone that makes him wonder whether he might actually do it, this time. Perhaps Peter is wondering the same thing. 

Elias is aware that he has been careful, lately. Peter is a man who has lost everything, which means he will have no qualms about dragging them all down with him. Peter is a man who has lost everything to his Archivist, and he may very well blame Elias for that too. Elias knows better than to be overtly _tender_ with him - that will be taken as a mockery - but he has no interest in giving Peter excuses to be reckless. Things are too delicate, now, for this. If he’d had any sense at all he’d have left him in the Lonely. 

But then, he wouldn’t know the potential of Jon’s power, and that is useful information too. Trade-off and compromise. A sacrifice here, a gain there. Elias stays still in the darkness and feels the pulse in Peter’s fingertips, his own rabbit-fast heartbeat. Pinned and helpless, blind, _prey_. It’s all he can do not to bare his teeth. 

Peter lets go and Elias drags in a ragged breath, coughs a few times to ensure that, yes, his lungs are still working, opens his mouth to ask what the _hell_ that was about only to find his words stolen from him _again_ , Peter taking that opportunity to press his leg up to his chest again and push into him, deep and fast all the way to the hilt. Elias feels almost wounded with the force of it, chest still burning as he drags in air and loses it all again on a moan, toes curling uselessly against the sheets as Peter finds his rhythm. 

“You-” Peter is talking, why is he still _talking_ , for a man who spends so much time craving silence and solitude he is _incessant_ sometimes, “are never going to forget me - are you?” 

Elias doesn’t have words for that. It’s a bizarre question. More bizarre still is the tone. Peter doesn’t sound defiant or victorious, he sounds resigned, almost _pleading_. Not pleading for Elias to keep his memory - the opposite. _Say it’s not so_. To promise to forget him, to leave him to the mists of time, to leave him in peace. Elias bears through a few more hard thrusts, grits his teeth and throws his head back, snaps his vision through a series of eyes and tries to centre himself. 

“No,” he spits, the word wrenched from him like a knife from his ribs, a fish hook from his mouth. Truths are always hard-fought and hard-won between them. Peter lets his breath go like he’s been holding it and then flattens a palm across his chest, hitching one of Elias’ legs up and over his shoulder and starting to fuck him in earnest, hard thrusts that leave Elias quite unable to speak even if he’d wanted to. There is something rough and desperate about it, and just as Elias is wondering if something, somewhere, has gone terribly wrong, he feels fumbling at his temple and squints against the sudden light as the blindfold is torn off. 

Peter looks - 

He is always pale, despite his life at sea, almost luminous in certain lights, grey hair and grey eyes and pallid, cold skin. A wraithlike, photo-negative of a man that takes up far more space than he ought. He looks _drawn_ , tired and fretful, and Elias gathers his impatience into a question, sucks in breath hard to ask it before whatever is collapsing has finished falling, finds Peter’s hand suddenly across his mouth. His thrusts never falter. 

“ _No_ ,” he all but snarls, pushes his fingers between Elias’ lips, stares down into his eyes. Elias is not used to feeling pinned under someone else’s watchful gaze - much less Peter, who so often avoids eye contact when he can - but it is unrelenting. Elias clenches around him, throat aching where Peter has squeezed it, chasing breath where he can past his fingers and the punishing thrusts knocking it out of him, writhing, straining against the ropes. Peter’s fingers are cold against his tongue, oddly soothing, and Elias locks his jaw hard against the impulse to bite even as he wonders why he’s doing so at all.

Peter comes with his forehead pressed to Elias’ and his teeth bared as if in some sort of defiance, reaching between them to wrap his hand back around Elias. It only takes a few strokes, rough and fast, before Elias is biting his tongue rather than cry out when he comes, staring up at Peter’s tightly-closed eyes. He watches Peter pull away, fingers slipping from his mouth, working his jaw a little and waiting for some manner of explanation, of continuation, of anything to explain what this - _this_ \- is. 

Peter is still watching him. Elias feels like he is teetering on the precipice of something, he just doesn’t have the words to ask _what_. “Well?” he asks finally and Peter laughs, a humourless little exhalation. 

“I’ve been thinking,” he sighs, one hand curled around Elias’ ankle, thumb rubbing at the delicate jut of bone there. “People...insist on asking me to give up your secrets. I - I don’t think I’m going to, you know. I don’t think it makes much of a difference at this point anyway, your plans being _your_ plans, but - I don’t think I can sit and watch this either. I shouldn’t be here. Not for this, not- not _like_ this.” 

Elias blinks. This is - unexpected. A bolt from the blue, really, and ill-timed and ill-thought-out, and altogether _clumsy_. He twists his wrists in the rope and grounds his thinking in what he knows: that this doesn’t matter. That none of this, come a day or two, will matter at all. 

That doesn’t make him any less angry. 

“You’re running away,” he says flatly, tries to pinpoint what it is about that that _rankles_ so. It’s hardly as if he’s built his plans around having somebody by his side. Peter has _never_ been a constant - fading in, fading out - and Elias knows better than to lynchpin anything he does around one individual. Everybody - even an Archivist - can be replaced. 

“‘Yes,” Peter says finally, damning in its finality. “I suppose I am. Thing is, it’s not the Eye I mind so much. One Entity to another, I don’t think I _care_ , really, if it can’t be the Lonely then they’re all equally awful-”

“Oh, don’t be _absurd_ -”

“But this isn’t _about_ the Eye. It’s about you. I won’t stop you. But I can’t watch you do it, either.” 

Elias’ lip curls and he twists his wrists again, trying to gain purchase against the soft rope to dig his nails in, unpick the knots. Good sailor’s knots. “So you’re feeling inadequate, is that it? Robbed of your own power and now you resent being so close to mine.” 

Peter frowns at him and then shrugs, stands to retrieve his clothes from the side of the room and tug them on. “Maybe that _is_ it. Can’t say I’m feeling _all_ too clear, these days, about what I think about anything. But I’m not going to sit by while you cackle maniacally and be your - God, I don’t know. Apocalypse bride. Seems to me if the world’s going to end, I’ll be ended with the rest of it. That feels a more peaceful way to end things.” 

“Where will you go? The Lonely won’t have you.” 

That lands. It shouldn’t, really, it’s an obvious jibe, but Peter winces anyway. Elias feels drawn-tight and furious. It is one thing for them to thwart one another at every turn. He’s been acting in anticipation of some manner of betrayal, a fight, one more wager, one more confrontation but this is worse. Tacit non-interference. He _loathes_ this. 

“Moorland,” Peter says finally, buttoning his shirt, turning away to tug something from his pocket and hang it around his neck, too fast for Elias to see. There’s a glint of metal - a chain, maybe double-layered - before it disappears beneath his collar, and Peter turns, rubbing the brass of his call between his fingers. “By all rights I ought to have just put an end to all of this.” 

“Why? Because you owe such deep obligations to the world?” Elias sneers. 

“No, no. I told you. It isn’t about the world. You Watch and See but you never were very good at _listening_ , Elias.” 

Peter ambles over to the bed and bends over, dropping a kiss onto his forehead as Elias twists in the ropes, seething and not sure why this betrayal, of all things, this tiny piece of cowardice and inertia, is infuriating him more than any attempt at disrupting his plans. 

“Be well,” Peter sighs, pats his cheek condescendingly and laughs when Elias, robbed of all his composure, twists his head as it to bite his fingers. “Ah - none of that. Let’s not end this with violence, dear heart. What was it you said - oh, yes. It won’t be that bad. You’ll see.” 

“ _Peter_ ,” Elias snaps, and he tilts his head, looking genuinely curious. 

“Yes?” 

In all of their long acquaintance, not once has Elias asked Peter to stay. He has coerced and manipulated, but he has never asked. He stares at Peter, searching his face, looking for the catalyst that has set this strange change of face in motion. 

“This won’t change anything,” he says finally, and Peter laughs. 

“Oh, I know. But I’ve never been very good at change, you know that. Goodbye, Elias.” 

It’s not dramatic. Footprints out of the bedroom, down the stairs, the click of the front door opening, the sound of it swinging shut. Elias follows Peter’s passage down the street in the cameras and the eyes of passers-by, making no effort to hide it, and Peter’s expression doesn’t falter. 

Elias settles back against the pillows, still gripping at the ropes for the right purchase to free himself. He’ll manage it in time, he knows; if Peter had wanted a permanent solution he’d have taken a leaf out of Dekker’s book, perhaps, or just thrown him into the Lonely altogether, but he hasn’t. He has accepted that the world will end, and declined to take any part in it, except as a victim. It is - fiercely, nauseatingly disappointing. 

Elias does free himself eventually, rubbing his wrists and sitting up on the bed, looking at the blindfold. It changes nothing, of course it doesn’t. It stings, nonetheless, to have saved the man’s life and be told that he doesn’t _want_ it. 

No matter. 

Elias has a letter to write. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle in for the next chapter lads it's going to be a big one 
> 
> Everyone who has left a comment thus far I owe you my life


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jonah's genitalia is referred to as a cock in this, just to make you aware.  
> Aaand some mild dub-con-ish type feelings; it's fully consensual but not discussed in any way so please be forewarned of that  
> If I've missed anything else in this chapter that requires a warning please do let me know
> 
> Otherwise enjoy the life and times of Jonah Magus
> 
> And! A MASSIVE thank you to Dundee & [Cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualthorin/pseuds/spiraldistortion) for reading through this, they are both heroes & scholars and absolute gems.

Elias is not used to writing with a biro. It feels insufficient, anticlimactic. But then he can hardly deliver an inked and wax-sealed statement to the Archivist, that would just be courting suspicion. 

A breath. One in, one out. Lungs, ribs, skin. Pen to paper. 

_Hello, Jon_.

* * * 

It goes like this: Jonah Magnus enters London society young and hungry and anonymous. He is fortunate that Edinburgh might as well be a million miles away to the glittering hordes of strangers - might as well be another world entirely. They are as familiar with Paris and Rome as they are with Soho and Kensington but they do not know Edinburgh. Jonah’s accent makes him a peculiarity, and he smiles and charms and drinks and thinks that perhaps a well-cut coat and an attitude of supercilious dignity will convince them that Magnus is an old name, a proud name, that his conspicuous absence from the circuit can be put down to eccentricity rather than irrelevance. 

He drinks what he cannot afford and charms his way into the houses of the rich, collects trinkets and accessories to help him disguise himself as one of their own, and the attitude comes as simply as breathing, like slipping on another face, as simply as he has slipped on the name _Jonah_. His name is not his name, and he is not himself, and it is _better_ like this. 

At night, the walls whisper _they know, they know, they know_. 

Robert Smirke is similarly young and similarly hungry and philosophises on the nature of humanity and divinity, and Jonah props his cheek on his elbow and listens, and learns. He learns snatches of verse that become commonplace parlance, references to Plato and Socrates and Aristotle, he learns the name Copernicus and borrows books from Smirke’s library to further his knowledge. Robert Smirke is, more to the point, rich, and he teaches Jonah what it is to be rich - or, rather, to _seem_ it - under the guise of geometry and the poetry of Catullus, those fragments of culture that denote wealth and status, a handsome young man in a hansom cab in the grip of a society that loves him for what he is - young and beautiful, one hand on his purse strings and the other around the globe.

* * * 

_Why does a man seek to destroy the world?_

“I wouldn’t have said destroy,” Robert mutters, his eyes far away. His lips are already stained with red wine and Jonah lets the taste of it settle into his mouth, looks past the bitter tannins to what lies underneath, oak and cinnamon and redcurrant. He is learning, still. But there is only so much one can learn about wine before one is caught in its hazy, swooning grasp. He tugs at his cuffs, raises his eyebrows, smiles - it is easy to smile and be appealing.

“No?” 

“No, or - rather, not to _seek_ to destroy. I don’t think anyone sets out to _destroy_ the world, even through a war.” 

“Certainly they engender a lot of destruction,” Jonah remarks, and Robert shrugs. 

“Yes, well, take - oh, the Americans, say.” 

“What of them?” 

“Well, Lord knows there was destruction enough in their rebellion.” 

“I suppose so,” Jonah blinks, nice and slow, watches the flush rising on Robert’s pale cheek as if the wine is seeping from his mouth straight through the rest of him, as if he is made of silk or paper. Overripe, like a fig, set to burst at a touch. Jonah keeps his hands folded in his lap and thinks about war, a strange and alien concept with which he has no desire to be better acquainted. “Your contention being that they didn’t seek destruction.” 

“No!” It explodes from Robert, all passion, and Jonah flicks his eyes to the bottle - empty. His glass has a little left in it, though, and he savours it, wonders if it would taste the same from Robert’s lips as from his glass. 

Foolish, idle thoughts. He is not an idle sort but wine imbues a heavy sort of lassitude that he is as yet still unused to, and it sends his mind off wandering. 

“No - Jonah, no, I think - well, what is war if not violence seeking permission to create?” 

“I think, perhaps, you have drunk too much,” Jonah laughs, and Robert shakes his head, candlelight gleaming from the signet ring on his left hand. 

“No, no - look, the Americans sought to create a world of their very own, in their way.” 

“A country, perhaps-”

“What is a country if not its own little world? Boundaries upon boundaries; all of that violence in pursuit of the liberty to create something anew. I don’t think anybody sets to war with intent to destroy, no - to preserve, sometimes, or perhaps to create.” 

“That seems,” Jonah sighs, tastes the words in his mouth, “antithetical. Surely there are better ways to create.” 

“Sometimes things have to be torn down or buried if new things are to grow in their place.” Robert shrugs, and Jonah props his chin on his hand, feels one of his curls brushing at his cheek. His hair is getting long again. Perhaps he’ll ask Robert for a recommendation. A gentleman ought to have a barber.

* * * 

He was brought up houseproud and clean because wealth came only to those that already had it, but cleanliness was next to divinity, and even the poorest churchmouse could be clean. It escalates itself to a horror of those things that lurk in the poorer quarters of London and crawl and creep and besmirch. Smirke has charcoal and graphite staining his fingertips and Jonah keeps himself scrupulously clean, clothes immaculate, hands gloved until nobody could look at them and think he has ever scrubbed a table or a wooden floor. 

He learns to fear filth as the accompaniment to poverty, literal stains upon his nascent reputation, and whilst he writes (because one must write to cement one’s alliances) he is diligent about scrubbing his hands and applying cold cream until they are soft and pale and lovely. Smirke’s friend Scott lifts one of his hands, amazed, and says _why, Jonah, you have a woman’s hands_ , and Jonah smiles and holds his gaze and thinks _they know, they know, they know_. 

* * * 

Immortality is a discussion that crops up wherever there is talk of death. Society is dogged by death, high society no exception, and there is a fashion for young gentlemen that consider the morbid and the dark, the colder corners of society. Normally it is classically minded, Orpheus and Eurydice, constellations, the glamour of immortality and the inevitability of the grave. Today, they are not talking about death. It is 1815 and Robert is talking in excitable terms about Jeremy Bentham and his Panopticon. 

Jonah thinks about watching the petty lives of vagrants and miscreants, of stipulating their daily routines, of winding their lives around his fingers and imposing his will. There are more beautiful things to consider, but Robert speaks with eloquence and passion about self-improvement, self-surveyance, that there is no more powerful influence than the feeling that one is being watched. 

But for what? The fear of consequence, or the fear of discovery? Jonah can quite understand both. He presses his fingers to his lips and looks at his cards, looks across the table to Robert who smiles at him, all encouragement. He has been teaching him bridge. It is a game that holds some appeal; with the right application, Jonah can guess within reasonable doubt the cards that lie in everybody’s hands, feint and finesse his plays to draw them out in the order he desires, bet his trump hands and let the circuit begin again. 

It is a disappointment when the game ends, but then, all games must surely end at some point. 

He bids one heart and thinks that whatever game is played throughout his life, he intends to win it. 

* * * 

Outside of candlelit studies and brightly lit parties there is ambiguity, in London, in the shadows. Jonah already knows to fear those people that lurk in alleys and corners and under spluttering streetlamps. He keeps his candle close and is rarely seen in the streets after darkness because there is far more chance, at night, of meeting the sort of wastrel that might recognise him as a fellow, a common sort, might hear the shape of his consonants and verbs and think _Cowgate_ and not _George Street_. He avoids the dark crowding of the docks and the opium dens and keeps to the safety of where it is light, where people will look at the fineness of his clothes and the delicacy of his gestures, all of those things that lie within his control. Jonah is not afraid of the dark but he eschews it, keeps to the light where he knows he can control what is seen.

Through Smirke, he is introduced to a host of strange and eccentric characters that take him into their confidence and clasp him close to the warm and narrow bosom of London society. There is a weight upon his shoulders - heavy coats, heavy shirts, all of it stiff with starch - and he feels too fragile for the hefty words he forces out like they’re mere trifles and not the product of hours of feverish study. Brandy makes him feel heavy and lethargic and the choking fear of all that he cannot let people know leaves him breathless and heavy-eyed, briefly melancholic, taking to his rooms and trying to learn more because he must, he _must_. It is not enough to be accepted, he must be _noted_. Society is a quagmire, a morass, and under the weight of his growing reputation he fights to keep his head above the tides. It is a terrible thing to drown in insignificance, in anonymity. 

He feels all at once too small and too large for the world that he inhabits. 

* * * 

“You, sir, are a peculiarity.” 

Jonah balks at the statement, tears his gaze from the street and turns indignantly from the window of Robert’s dining room to face his would-be accuser. 

“I, sir?”

“You.” Heavy-set features and pale, pale eyes. Jonah is learning to use gestures and posture to possess a room, to catch attention where he would like it, but he is unlikely ever to dominate one as Mordechai Lukas can. 

“Whatever can you mean?” 

“Oh, don’t take on. I meant no offence.” Mordechai Lukas is soft-spoken, soft like thunder. Jonah clasps his hands at the small of his back and looks him up and down. There is fine silver thread running through the blue of his waistcoat and Jonah follows it all the way up to his face, those eyes, smiling lips behind a white beard. A _beard_ on a gentleman - Jonah had had to look twice to confirm it. Such things are rarely seen these days, but Mordechai has money and status enough that all the gossip in the world couldn’t dislodge his place in high society. Indeed he is frequently absent from events that he himself isn’t hosting, picking and choosing his appearances carefully. Jonah envies him the liberty of it. “I mean only that you are not after the usual fashion of our Mr Smirke’s acquaintances.” 

“Am I not,” Jonah does not narrow his eyes but he wants to very much. Mordechai is unsettling, his apparent amusement even more so. Jonah’s fingers twitch behind his back and he finds himself acutely aware of his clothes, wondering if there is a loose thread, a stain, anything that might give him away. 

“No.” He is a man of few words, Mordechai, given more to listening than speaking. When he does speak, though, however softly, the room inevitably falls quiet to hear him. He shows little interest in the arts, in poetry, in literature - or indeed in geometry or in mathematics. He keeps to himself. Jonah does not know what to think about having been approached by him. “So many of his friends are rattles, chattering on like birds. You listen.” 

“Oh, well-” Jonah searches for the right words for this, considers offence, disregards it swiftly in favour of a coquettish little smile, a tilt of his head. Perhaps Mordechai can be disarmed by humour. “There is much to be learned by listening, I think.” 

“Mm.” Mordechai eyes him a moment longer and then steps closer, Jonah staring up at him as he reaches out, slow and deliberate, confirming that he isn’t going to flinch away before he settles his hand against his cheek. It is a surprisingly gentle touch but Jonah can feel steel behind it. He is rooted to the spot, as panicked as if Mordechai had reached into his chest and gripped his lungs rather than just brushed his fingers across his face - such an intimate touch from a man he scarcely knows. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears. “Come and visit me sometime, Mr Magnus,” Mordechai says finally. “I will find some other things for you to listen to.”

He leaves as quietly as he arrived and Jonah does not stop feeling cold for a week. It does not stop him from visiting, regardless.

* * * 

It is Fairchild he meets next, though not by that name - he is calling himself Emiliano Miniati, and he takes Jonah with a hand against his elbow and leads him out of a party before the gavotte is called, takes him out to a balcony and talks to him in distractingly amiable terms. For the first time in months Jonah feels something in his chest loosen, feels that perhaps he can breathe.

They dance later, and the room spins wildly above him, under him, the chandelier melting and dripping into the ice sculpture that their gracious host has commissioned to fill the room with transient, extravagant cold. 

Jonah clings to Emiliano’s arms through his shirt until the world comes solid under his feet again and Emiliano smiles at him, brushes a thumb over his cheek, looks into him - through him - with blue, blue eyes. _Mr Magnus, you have something of an old soul about you_ , he says softly, and Jonah doesn’t realise what he means by that until his name is no longer his name. Emiliano talks about the transience of society, too, shrugs and says that in the grand scheme of things what _is_ money, really, what _is_ it to be meaningful? Jonah sits and listens and thinks that he will inscribe his meaning on the world by blood or by ink or by fire. Emiliano is a rake, says provocative things that make Barnabas Bennett clutch his pearls and accuse him of villainy. 

_Villainy, Mr Bennett? Well, we are villains, all_ says Emiliano, and Jonah thinks _true_ and then thinks _Tennyson, misquoted_ and comforts himself with that small piece of knowledge, a recognition of his own hard work. 

Emiliano is in need of a tenant for his beautiful townhouse because he is so rarely still in his movements, so often flighty and restless, and his rooms are scarcely ever occupied for more than a month. He asks only a pittance and Jonah leaps at the chance, choosing to disregard the notion that it may be charity. It is all perfectly respectable and the house is old and fashionably located, and he is not so proud as to reject a fortuitous offer. He establishes himself with his scant possessions and sets to building a home of which any gentleman could be proud, filled with the right antiquities to suggest decades of ownership. Robert gifts him a grandfather clock as a housewarming present, and its gentle ticking sends Jonah off to sleep in the midst of fevered writings. In five years time he will buy the house outright from Emiliano, and he will smile and accept his first offer, and say _well, Jonah, I congratulate you on your becoming_. Jonah will choose to ignore that. Emiliano seems to see too much of him - he knows, he _knows_. He just, for whatever reason, doesn’t much seem to care.

* * * 

Smirke gathers his confidantes close and over the course of a month of his evenings his conversations evolve a common thread - what it is to be human becoming what it is to be passionate, what it is to be _afraid_ \- and Mordechai Lukas looks up from his game of whist and listens closely. Jonah sits with Bennett’s head in his lap and strokes fingers against his ringlets, all of them safe and held within the paper-lined walls of Smirke’s house, each inch of it covered with sketches and plans. Smirke has letters, too, in a locked box within his desk. Jonah palms the little silver key from Smirke’s breeches where they lie on the floor, pads through the house on a cold morning and takes a few letters from the box. None specific, none chosen for any reason other than that they are Smirke’s, and letters are an insight into his mind, and Jonah wants to know if that which he writes matches to that which he _says_. 

It does. He seems sincere in his theories.

He returns the key to Smirke’s pocket and slips into bed again, moving from the cold sheets to the warmth of Smirke’s chest and wondering what he can do with what he knows. 

* * * 

“What are you thinking, Jonah?” 

Jonah looks up from where he is standing, hands on Robert’s desk, splayed across his plans for Millbank. The flower-pattern of the cells and walls is quite appealing, and he imagines himself within that central column, looking out into the cells of prisoner upon prisoner. Like looking into a honeycomb, he thinks, like cracking open the walls of a pomegranate, like taking hold of somebody’s ribs and pulling them open to gaze on the heart within. Life upon life, ants in a nest.

What does a life mean, if it is constrained within four walls? Can it be said to be a life at all? Would it be worth tearing down one of those shadowed lives - a hundred - to build something better? 

He startles at the gentle touch of a hand against his, looks up, smiles. Barnabas’ hand is warm against his and Jonah bears it for only a few seconds before it becomes too much, almost searing. He is balancing, teetering on a web of careful affections and alliances. It is tiring sometimes, and invigorating at others, to be held and choked, to be freed and dropped. He cannot allow himself complacency, no matter how soft Barnabas’ smile, how open his face.

“I am thinking,” he says finally, reaching out to take hold of Barnabas’ shoulder to turn him just slightly so he can adjust his cravat, pulling the silk carefully through his fingers, “that Robert must have collated an awful lot of information about these Entities of his.” 

“Oh.” Barnabas seems surprised by the topic of choice, tilts his head a little. “Well, yes.” 

“It must be complex, organising all of those varying sources.” Jonah brushes a thumb against one of the walls in Robert’s sketch, not quite hard enough to lift any of the graphite from the paper, a gentle and whispering touch. “But it occurs to me that the more information one collects, the better-equipped one might be to achieve the equilibrium he is so eager for.” 

“I suppose so.” Barnabas is clearly not of a mind to discuss this. He reaches up to still Jonah’s hands on his cravat, undoes it entirely and sets it aside on the desk. “Did you have something in mind?” 

“I might do.” 

“Tell me.” Barnabas’ hands are sure and careful against his hips and he presses Jonah back until he is seated against the edge of the desk, Barnabas between his legs and rubbing his thumb over the mother-of-pearl buttons of his waistcoat. 

“I’m not so sure I have your full attention,” Jonah replies dryly, tilting his head up. “Can I be assured of your support?” 

“Jonah-” it’s a sigh, something soft and precious and quite unconscious. Jonah wants to catch it in his hands. “You know I can scarcely deny you anything.” 

“Is that what I know.” Barnabas undoes the top button of his waistcoat and Jonah laughs, reaching up to stay his hands, glancing back towards the door. “Why, Mr Bennett, you’ll have both of our houses in ruin before the night is out. There is a whole merry gathering downstairs and they’ll note our absence soon enough.” 

“I shouldn’t think they’ll pay it too much mind,” Barnabas replies easily. He’s right, of course - it would hardly be the first time that one or two gentlemen had stolen from Robert’s dining room to find some privacy, hardly even the first time that _Jonah_ has done it - but it’s a foolish thought regardless. Barnabas has a lot of pretty, foolish thoughts falling from his lips like blossoms from a bower. He is a Romantic. Jonah doesn’t think he has it in him to follow suit, but it’s nice to pretend sometimes. “Besides, it just means you’ll have to be quiet.” 

“A challenge? I see,” Jonah sighs, brings Barnabas’ hand to his lips. “Well. Perhaps I shall let you have your wicked way with me.” 

“In return for indulging whatever new scheme you are cooking up - yes, I should think that that will be agreeable.” 

Barnabas has a lot of pretty, foolish thoughts, but that’s alright - it is easy to be pretty and foolish when one has the funds to accommodate it. It is why Jonah is asking him this, and not Smirke, who is settling his money into his architecture and his other projects. Emiliano has more than enough but his support is flighty at best and Jonah doesn’t think he could pin him down for long enough to secure any real certainty, and Mordechai-

Jonah is wary of settling too much in Mordechai’s pocket. He keeps him at a distance and it suits them both, but he could so easily fall into his thrall. Best that he not focus all of his attentions on one man, even a man such as Mordechai. 

More than that, he has been paying attention to Robert’s theories, and he has noted the cool weather and the mist that so often dogs Mordechai’s steps through the London streets, the ache in his chest when Mordechai takes his leave. He has his suspicions.

Barnabas, though, has more than enough money to waste, and the easy infatuation of one inclined to waste it, and Jonah gives him his sweetest smile and tugs him down by his shirt collar for a kiss. It’s no hardship, after all. He is all nut-brown curls and warm eyes, fresh and lovely with laughing lips and clever fingers that make short work of Jonah’s trousers with quick deft movements. 

“Tell me about this scheme of yours,” he coaxes, pressing Jonah against the desk a little more. His trousers are still on, close-fitting and well-tailored, unbuttoned just enough for Barnabas to slip his hand within. This close he scarcely has room to manoeuvre and his fingers are a firm press against Jonah where he is already wet and aching, turning his head to breathe in the smell of Barnabas’ hair, to nose at his temple. 

“I- a library, of some sort,” he breathes, shivers as Barnabas drags two fingers through his folds, twists his hand a little to press his thumb against his cock. “A collection of all the encounters that might pertain to the Entities.” 

“Mmhm.” Barnabas presses a kiss under his ear, to the curve of his neck, rubs tight little circles around his cock that have Jonah arching against him. “To what end, Jonah?” 

“Just- _ah_ \- just information,” he replies, feeling the pressure of Barnabas’ two fingers against him, not entering him, just _there_. It’s maddening. “Curation. I- I think it would be- _oh_ \- opportune- I-”

“Easy, now.” Even like this Barnabas sounds so sweet, a breath of what could be honest concern in his voice. He mouths against Jonah’s jaw, slides his free hand around his waist and presses his thigh between Jonah’s legs, pushing his hand further up, further against him until Jonah all but melts in his grip. 

Barnabas steals his words away from him somehow. Jonah doesn’t like that. But it’s easy to tolerate when he likes everything else so much. At any rate Barnabas doesn’t much seem to mind, and that’s alright - he has his support, will have his funding to start his plans, can give himself over to a moment of folly in return. Barnabas’ fingers press into him, crook neatly, and Jonah tips his head back with a stifled cry, pinned between Smirke’s panopticon and Barnabas’ lips, surrounded on all sides by potentiality and a building, brewing tension that breaks against Barnabas’ hand.

He has his money. It is not the first contract he seals with a kiss, and it will not be the last.

* * * 

“Mr Magnus.” 

It always starts that way with them, the formality, the little dance of manners. Mordechai cannot be a stranger to the feel of Jonah’s name in his mouth by now, and yet he insists on it. It is almost endearing. 

“Mr Lukas,” he replies. They have met in Hyde Park, ambling gently along the pathway on the southern bank of the Serpentine, and though Jonah is sure he read that the weather was to be clear the sky is overcast above them, and there is a gentle, rolling fog over the water. “I trust you are keeping well?” 

“Well enough.” Mordechai has a cane, though he doesn’t seem to need it, taps it gently against the ground as they walk. His boots are polished, his frock coat tailored to perfection. Once again Jonah straightens his spine and wonders why it is that he can feel so very singularly watched, as if he were the only thing worth watching. Perhaps it is just that Mordechai does not watch people very often. “I thought I might show you something.” 

Jonah raises an eyebrow. Mordechai has shown him a lot of things. None, so far, have been suitable for a public pathway. Though the park is empty - surprising for this time of day - only a few governesses with their young charges, one or two young ladies, the roll and clatter of a cab going by, fewer and fewer as they walk further on. 

“What did you have in mind?” he asks, and Mordechai chuckles, a rumble in his chest that seems oddly loud even in the expanse of the park. 

“Just a bit of peace.”

That is not especially illuminating. The fog is coiling at Mordechai’s boots and Jonah feels the space between them stretching on and on, is tempted to reach across and bridge the gap just to prove it can be narrowed. Mordechai turns to look at him as if he knows what he’s thinking and Jonah purses his lips. 

“Where are you taking me, Mordechai?” 

“Calm yourself.” Mordechai is the one to reach out, then, one broad hand settling on his shoulder, sliding down his back to curve possessively around his waist. It’s intimate, scandalous, and Jonah finds himself turning automatically to see if anyone might note them - but, no. They are alone. Quite alone, even in the very heart of London. “Or have you changed your mind about learning?” 

It feels like a challenge, a test of some kind. Jonah lets out a long, slow breath, and leans into Mordechai’s side. He doesn’t know how this works, how it is that Mordechai has found them such solitude, but he is unlikely to find any answers if he cannot bear through with fortitude. 

He wonders if Mordechai would release him, if he asked for it. 

“Teach me, then,” he says finally, and Mordechai’s smile is grim and satisfied. 

“Look,” is all he says, pointing out to a figure sitting by the banks of the lake. Jonah tenses, set to pull away and regain a respectable distance, but Mordechai just tightens his grip and shushes him. “No, no. He cannot see us.” 

Strange, really. Jonah is not accustomed to disbelieving the evidence of his own eyes, but there is a certainty in Mordechai’s voice that grounds him, makes him linger. “How can that be?” he asks, whisper-soft, words dissipating into the space between atoms. Mordechai doesn’t answer but he stops walking, pulls Jonah in front of him and settles his hands against his waist. His chest is broad and strong - it feels like leaning against a wall, like being held in the embrace of a straitjacket, like being anchored. The firm press of a kiss to the top of his head has Jonah shivering, though perhaps that is the cold. 

“There are more things in heaven and earth,” Mordechai says softly, leaves the rest of the quote to the air between them, the space where their shared knowledge can settle into a sort of certainty. Jonah grabs at it, holds it tight to his chest, something he can cling to and know. Mordechai’s voice is soft, so soft, but not tender. There is little gentleness in him. He is soft like a tiger’s steps, like a spiderweb, like the sound of a knife unsheathed in darkness. His lips are cool and dry where he touches them to Jonah’s temple. “You know where we are.” 

Jonah weighs up the benefits of his ignorance and balls his courage in his throat, nods. 

“Good. How do you find it?” 

“I think-” Jonah lifts a hand up as if to touch Mordechai’s cheek, shudders as he finds it caught and brought behind his back, fingers circling his wrist, “I- would not venture here without a guide.” 

“Clever boy.” 

The figure by the lake has not moved to note them - perhaps he cannot see them after all. It is nonetheless strange to watch a stranger while Mordechai’s hand smooths itself down his ribs and flicks open his trousers. 

“ _Mordechai_ ,” he hisses, and is shushed again. 

“Hush. This is no place for exclamation, Jonah - be still, now.” 

He obeys. Whether this is a display of Mordechai’s power, a threat, just a whim - he isn’t sure. Mordechai is so intentful in all that he does and it is impossible to mark what he will do next. Jonah thinks that if he asked, he would stop - Mordechai sets much store by courtesy - but he finds that he does not quite want him to. He nods. 

The air is cool and slightly damp, his skin mist-kissed as Mordechai pulls them back to one of the park benches and makes him sit, tugs his trousers to his ankles and settles between his legs. It’s obscene, cold wood and iron against his back, the rush of air and blank space, and Jonah feels that emptiness all the way to his core even as Mordechai bends his head to the inside of his thighs. He sucks in a sharp breath and feels Mordechai look up, freezes in place. 

“Hush,” Mordechai repeats softly and Jonah nods, breath stuttering in his throat, caught in this strange not-world while Mordechai applies himself with the dedication he accords to every important task, quiet and diligent and single-minded. He does not touch him with anything except his lips and tongue, he is achingly gentle, and Jonah thinks that this is not so much out of a desire to be careful as an urge to see him hungry and wanting. 

Well. Now, he is hungry, and he is wanting, and he is afraid that he will be left here like the man by the lake - unable to take his eyes off this unknowing participant - and he is afraid that the mist will rise all at once and he will be exposed before the eyes of society. 

He bites his lip until it bleeds, faltering little cries stuck hard in his throat until he fears he will choke on them, the drag of Mordechai’s tongue over him slow and careful. When he finishes it is not a fierce rush, not a sharp peak and a sharper fall. It rolls over him like fog and leaves him boneless, heavy-eyed. 

When Mordechai kisses him, his lips are body-warm and slick. Jonah reaches for his trousers with fumbling, half-numb fingers and finds them caught instead, Mordechai shaking his head. 

“Not here. Later,” he says softly. “Come now, Mr Magnus, you have made yourself indecent.”

Even in the cold of the mist Jonah’s flush is searing, heating the air around him until he fancies it might shimmer like a mirage, and he scrambles to right himself, tugging up his trousers and trying to catch his breath, to calm the blush against his cheeks. Mordechai runs his thumb against his lips to collect the last of the blood and smiles sharklike. 

“I hope that was illuminating.” 

“It was certainly novel,” Jonah replies. He is as yet entirely sure of what to think, other than to know that provided he is still interesting to Mordechai he is unlikely to end up by the lake, to know that Mordechai can bring him here and leave him here. That for all of his knowledge, he cannot help what is done to him. 

It is an important lesson. Mordechai could have chosen a far less gentle way of teaching it; years later, Jonah will remember that, and think fondly of him for it. Then, though, he has little space for fondness past the rush of infatuation and cold, clenching fear. He takes Mordechai’s arm and they walk on, the fog giving way to the pale light of the winter sun. 

* * * 

He is not always done-unto, pressed to walls and desks and benches. He grows bolder in time, catches Barnabas’ fingers and pulls him in for drowsy kisses when they are both swooning from laudanum, the air thick and sweet-smelling between them. Mordechai eschews such pleasures and that’s fine; Jonah finds himself inclined to separate those two regardless. The things he does with Mordechai are best kept to privacy - it is how Mordechai prefers it, anyway - and Jonah has no desire for most people to see him debased and writhing as Mordechai likes him, silent and trembling and wrecked. 

Besides which, the veiled comments Emiliano makes gives Jonah cause to think that very few people see Mordechai intimately. Privileged knowledge is something very precious to him indeed, something to hoard and treasure. 

Mordechai will not pose for a portrait, does not seem to wish to be commemorated after his death. Jonah waits for him to sleep one night and then fetches a candle, pencil and paper, sketches him in broad strokes and careful movements until the candle burns out and then hides the little drawing until he is safe and away. After Mordechai’s death he intends to have a record of his face, whether Mordechai likes it or not. 

* * * 

Mordechai Lukas’ beautiful London townhouse burns in the spring - an awful accident, apparently, an unavoidable tragedy - and Jonah sends his condolences and commiserations by the morning post, meets him that same evening to admire the banked fury in those ice-blue eyes. He is sangfroid enough, conceding that fortune is a cruel mistress but that there is nothing within those four walls that cannot be remade or replaced. Jonah suggests that if he is in need of somewhere to lay his head for a night then he can repay his kindnesses with a bed, and Mordechai sips his drink, and holds his eyes, and nods. 

Mordechai is quiet and careful and dangerous. Mordechai fits his hands around Jonah’s waist and moves him like he is porcelain - no, enamel, like he is light but not delicate - and Jonah tangles his hands in his white, white hair and relishes the sting of loss whenever he leaves. He leaves far more than he stays. He is reserved in his words and his affections both and quick to anger, quick to leave. Jonah is fascinated by him. He dances with Barnabas and watches Mordechai from across the room, head laid against Barnabas’ shoulder, unblinking, unbreaking. Jonah considers fire consuming Mordechai’s house and thinks that there is not a passion hot enough to consume Mordechai wholly, that he is anathema to passion, and yet Jonah is caught in his sway regardless. 

Later, he will think back on the fire and the agents of the Desolation that must have been operating in London at that time. He was so young, so foolish. _Lucky_. He cannot rely upon luck but he is glad that fortune found in his favour enough to shield him from the attentions of other Entities while he sends letters from London to Edinburgh and starts to build.

* * * 

There is a heatwave that summer, the air thick and sweltering and fetid, and Jonah holds perfumed handkerchiefs to his nose and reads in the papers of frayed tempers melted to violence, of bodies left to bloat and swell in the drying, crusting mud by the river, of arguments turning to fights turned to murder. He avoids altercations that summer, softens his words, uses delicate gestures and downturned eyes to avoid sharp comments. Mordechai makes him eminently aware of his own fragility and Jonah is not keen to fall foul of violence, to be relegated to the tender mercies of a doctor that might save or mutilate. 

The human body is an insubstantial shell and Jonah holds fast to his resolve where he cannot rely on weapons, swerves the risk of blood, of feeling like something to be chased and beaten and killed. Under Mordechai’s hands he learns an appreciation for pain and pressure and the limits of his body. Under Mordechai’s hands he knows that he will only appreciate such things for as long as they remain within his control. 

* * * 

Barnabas is different, of course. He laughs and dances, he makes Jonah forget, sometimes, that he is so in danger of being undone by the right word in the right ear. He is all life and vibrancy, he is fresh and innocent and foolish. Jonah has nothing to fear from him, but there is a tangibility in fear. Jonah looks at Bennett and thinks that he knows nothing except that which he is told - he loves him for it, sometimes. That is not enough. 

When Bennett falls foul of Lukas, Jonah knows that he is lost before he finishes the letter. The debt is a surprise; Jonah can’t help but wonder if Barnabas ran himself into financial hardship for his sake, for his Institute. It’s a hefty price to pay, but it is paid.

When he retrieves his bones Mordechai greets him with an ice-cold kiss and a quiet, thoughtful look, and Jonah knows that he has surprised him. His efforts are rewarded with a new source of funding, gifted in perpetuity.

That, at least, is something to be gained from this. Bennett’s skull is frail and delicate, a grim _memento mori_. Jonah presses his lips to it, and thinks that he will not follow him into the grim night. London society reforms itself seamlessly over Bennett’s absence and Jonah watches as people cease to speak his name or to reminisce over his jokes and his fondness for dancing, reminds himself how frail memories can be, promises himself that he will not be irrelevant. 

If he cries for Barnabas’ loss it is like crying for a childhood he will never admit to having lived, for a person that he will never admit to having been. It is cathartic and cleansing, it leaves him empty and aching, but that’s alright; he has things with which to fill that ache, if it pleases him. He has time in which to enjoy that ache, and that pleases him too. 

It certainly pleases Mordechai. Mordechai does not think him a threat. Jonah is glad of it, encourages it, bears being condescended to in return for his safety and his status. Mordechai is not kind to those that threaten him, whether they mean to or not. Jonah watches him take his leave in the cold light of another dawn and thinks _he will not know_. 

* * * 

It does not escape his notice that there are fears that touch him and fears that do not. The Flesh is an old friend and a stranger both - he has hated his body and loved it, he uses it and he eschews it. The Spiral makes Jonah cringe away, sends him back to Smirke’s side to talk for a while about geometries and equilibriums, self-evident and number-based and utterly, incontrovertibly true. The End is the end is the end is the end and Jonah will not countenance it. 

It is that, really, that drives him. Once he has become, once he is so cemented into London that his reputation is above question - _Jonah Magnus, why, he has always been here, he is one of us, he is part of the furniture_ \- it is the fear of the next that spurs him on. Since he cannot know what may come after, he will not step into it at all. He reads and he learns. He watches, he listens, he waits. He drinks in the secrets of the dark underbelly of the Fears and thinks _I know, I know, I know_.

* * * 

“I think it's just us, now, Jonah.” Robert is in his cups, gloomy, and Jonah watches candlelight play over his greying curls, remembers him young and passionate. “Mordechai declines to see me at all these days, Scott is long gone, and I- there are so few people I can trust anymore.” 

Jonah hums assent, swirls his brandy in his glass. Robert’s shoulders are slumping, all the tension and vibrancy of youth that used to keep him up until dawn cut string by string, leaving him drawn and old. 

“Balance was never going to be an easy thing to achieve,” he says softly in the most reasonable tone he can muster. “The loss of people to one side or another is inevitable.” 

“I don’t think I can do this alone.” 

Jonah stifles a sigh. Once upon a time such a plea would have lifted blood to his cheeks and brought him to his feet with some declaration of loyalty - either because he felt it, or felt that it was expected - but that is the ardour of youth. Now he watches Robert and considers that for all of his erudition, he understands really very little. 

“I - I can’t think how to stop it,” Robert adds, almost in a whisper. “These Rituals. The world is perpetually teetering on its axis and I feel like I alone am holding it in place.” 

“Well, Archimedes,” Jonah chuckles, “then I shall find you a lever and a sturdier fulcrum.” 

“I should prefer to have your assistance rather than your levity.” 

Robert had been so idealistic, once upon a time. All of his talk of war as a vector for creation. Jonah hadn’t understood it then - how could he - but he thinks he does now, and finds it curious that as his own beliefs have solidified with his age and his experience, Robert has only become more fretful. He stands, feeling the strain in his back and his legs, the pulls of an aging body downwards towards the grave. Not yet, not yet. 

“Come, now. Self-pity doesn’t suit you,” he coaxes, catches Robert’s hand and clasps it between his own. “You have me, as ever you have had me. Why would you doubt it?” 

It’s a dangerous question. What _does_ he know? Robert watches him with gloomy eyes, rationality warring with sentiment, and Jonah waits. Is this it, the moment he will be confronted, where his first confidante will turn and see him not as a fellow but as an enemy? 

Robert bows his head to Jonah’s hands and sighs like a wounded creature. 

“I doubt everything these days. But not you, Jonah, never you,” he says softly. 

It should be sad to see Robert like this, all of the bright flame of his intellect so thoroughly burned out to ashes by fear. Jonah wonders why instead he feels so triumphant. He slips his hand around to the back of Robert’s neck and whispers ‘courage’, then tucks his face against his hair to hide his smile. 

* * * 

The first attempt at the Crown is doomed to fail, but for that brief moment in which it takes hold it is transcendent. All of Jonah’s frailty, paper skin and ceramic ribs, all of it splits into knowledge and he is undone - he is a singularity, a point of geometry - he is the mathematical certainty of the duration and power of a supernova and he _Knows_. 

The world crumbles around him. 

Jonah allows himself a week to mourn and to recuperate, watches dispassionately as the papers report on the deaths of Millbank’s unfortunate prisoners, and feels at the edges of this new vision of his - transplants that vision from his old body to the next. 

The next body’s name is Lucien Bennett. Jonah tells himself it is just his little joke. Mordechai - who whilst not a being of Knowledge is certainly keen-eyed enough to Know him when he sees him - smiles coolly and says _pleased to meet you, Mr Bennett_ and is good enough not to comment further. His kisses are rougher that night, grip bruising against the new and unmarked skin on his hips, and Jonah repays the favour by not commenting on that either.

Time ticks on. 

His first Archivist is pushed too far, too fast, utterly consumed by the Knowledge that Jonah tries to impart, ends her days raving and terrified and quite insensible. 

Jonah teaches himself patience once again. 

Another Archivist falls to the Hunt, a gruesome affair that has him drawing in protections around the Institute - not for his Archivist’s sake, but for the sake of all the knowledge he is collecting within, the tunnels that still crackle with a cold and absorbing power. 

Elias chooses his Archivists carefully every time. They must be clever, that’s a given, and diligent to their task. Picking out staff without many connections to the rest of the world is always sensible given the sticky ends that so many Institute staff can come to; whilst he is careful about keeping the right facts on hand in case of police interference, it’s wise not to court these things. Faith is a harder thing to plan for. 

Some Archivists are too fearful, too easily consumed by the Eye before they can start to feed it properly. Beholding is a greedy, insatiable thing, and Elias has to choose those that are strong enough to withstand its rapacious appetites before becoming hungry themselves. Some Archivists are strong, yes, and Eye-touched, but too easily swayed by others. He loses one to the Slaughter, another to the Dark (that one _stings_ , but it has its own logic; the more horrible secrets they uncover, the less they wish to know). One he loses to a knife in an alleyway and his furious search leaves him forced to conclude that it was just bad luck, a mugging gone awry. One can’t plan for everything. 

He is fond of some of them. But even through his fondness he has to admit that none of them are quite right for his endeavours, none of them reach that apex of power and hunger needed to be true believers.

And then, finally, Gertrude - clever, persistent, pragmatic Gertrude. 

He’d had such high hopes for her, really. Ambition, determination, a single-minded ruthlessness. She could have been perfect had she not been so determined on morality. Her own sort of morality, granted, the type that would allow for the dismemberment of an otherwise innocent ex-astronaut, sacrifices wherever necessary. Like Gertrude it is solid and uncompromising, possessed with the idea of what the world ought to be, what must be compromised to make it so.

Thoroughly utilitarian. Bentham would have approved. 

Even now, it is hard not to feel grateful to her for all she taught him in her fifty years presiding over the Archives. Jonah is not foolish enough to _miss_ her, per se, and certainly has no regrets about ending her life when she progressed from an irritation to a loose cannon to a threat, and yet - well. End of an era. He has lived through, and ended, a lot of eras, but he is still fond of that one. 

And of course, Gertrude expedites the discovery of his grand plan, that single moment of crystalling knowledge that has evaded him for almost two centuries. In his office Jonah sits in Elias Bouchard’s body, watches the Dark’s ritual sputter and fail, and savours the light and clarity of new and perfect knowledge. 

Which brings him to Jon. 

* * * 

_Do you see where I’m going, Jon?_

His Archivist is trying so very, very hard to resist reading. He is strong, yes, but he is still so inexperienced, and Elias has had centuries to hone his craft. It is dark within the Panopticon, the walls damp and cold, and Elias has taken the liberty of bringing another chair to sit opposite his old body and watch. Oh, Jon is _struggling_. Muscles straining, teeth clenching against each and every syllable, that lovely voice of his gone taut, so tight that Elias fancies he could pluck his vocal chords like harpsichord strings.

“Now, repeat after me,” he whispers, and hears his voice overlaid with Jon’s, underlaid with something deeper and larger than the both of them. He wonders if Jon can hear his voice too. There is a pressure against his skull and Elias tilts his head back to enjoy it properly, dark and impossibly huge fingers cradling his head. 

He is glad - in a petty, superficial sort of way - that it is Jon reading this, and not Gertrude. Just for the atmosphere. He has worked enough, sacrificed enough, to indulge in the desire for a little atmosphere. It hardly matters, though, as he can hardly hear Jon past the rush of power within the walls of the Panopticon, an echo of his first attempt, shaking the stone. The noise is building - deafening - the rushing, crackling static vibrating in Elias’ teeth until he thinks it will shake him apart entirely and then, all at once-

Nothing. 

And then everything. 

* * * 

If Peter had been asked to pick a place to witness the end of the world, a rail-replacement bus would not have been his first choice. Bad enough that he is unable to walk through the Lonely in solitude, bad enough to have to deal with the _public_ , but he is pressed cheek-by-jowl to a teenager listening to absurdly loud music through tinny headphones. 

Given his current temper, he is sorely tempted just to take the whole bus into the mist and have done. If that isn’t a suitable sacrifice to appease his patron he isn’t sure _what_ will be. 

But then, it isn’t about appeasement, is it - he keeps forgetting that. 

The bus draws to a halt in the middle of an empty road and Peter - who has closed his eyes to try and avoid the sight and attention of others as much as he can - flinches at a rush of Power intense enough to shake his heart in his chest, crackling over him, tugging at his throat and his gut until he thinks, just for a moment, that he is to be torn apart all over again. 

The first wave passes but the pressure remains, bearing down on the top of his skull, that same prickling that he feels within the Institute sometimes. He is not naive enough to try and fool himself into thinking he doesn’t know what it means, and he ignores the shrieking and screaming of his fellow passengers to walk calmly down the centre aisle and pull the emergency handle to open the doors of the bus. 

There are no clouds in the sky but the air is humid and oppressive regardless, and it presses onto him like a weight, stings him like sunburn. Peter squints up into what ought to be the sun and is met with darkness instead, the vast and gaping mass of a pupil large enough to fall into. 

He wonders if Fairchild is on the wing. The thought of him flailing against the Watcher makes Peter laugh - hysteria, probably, but he is doubled over with it, gasping for breath, pinned and hobbled underneath the incomprehensible and relentless feeling of being Seen. 

So this is the apocalypse. Peter oughtn’t be surprised that Elias has managed it after all. He just didn’t think he’d be on his knees, gasping for breath, alive and helpless to experience it. 

Elias is probably glad about that, too, if he is still Elias enough to register it. Peter bares his teeth in the most defiant grin he can manage, fixes his vision on the furthest point in the darkness, and stares right back. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The End is the end is the end is the end. This is not the end.

“You know, all things considered, I thought it might be a bit more, ah- explosive.” 

Peter is sitting next to the bus, back against the wheel arch, doing his best to acclimate to the wholly new and very unpleasant feeling of being utterly and completely Seen. It feels like a constant pressure over him, prickling at the back of his neck, like wanting to sneeze and being unable to draw in the breath to even attempt it. Overwhelming, unending tension. 

“I mean, _aesthetically_ I suppose it’s got its merits. Big eyes in the sky, and all. But I’d expected tsunamis and storms and the world splitting itself at its edges. Honestly, this is all a bit disappointing.” 

Alright, it’s hardly a _normal_ 3pm, but Peter feels like he’s probably had worse ones. The one during which he got torn apart does spring to mind. Funny how that _hasn’t_ happened again - that essential difference between an active watcher and a passive one, between being Known and merely being Seen. 

“It’s not just the Eye, though, is it?” That much is apparent. Oh, the Watcher is the most obvious one, granted; the void of the pupil is impossibly dark, ringed in luminous, nauseating green that casts an odd light all around them. It makes the sun look pale and wan, a tiny white spot against the vast and arcing horizon, the curvature of the Earth now just the convex sweep of a cornea, and yet - Peter can smell smoke in the air. 

He sighs, turns his head a little to his companion. “Slaughter grounds, I’d guess. You’d think Desolation from the smoke but I reckon that’s just incidental burning rather than scorched earth tactics. You wait, this’ll be all no-man’s land in a few days. Not that _you_ care.” 

He reaches out, pats the shoulder of his fellow traveller, grimaces as the motion jostles the gear-stick lodged firmly through their eye. It’s a good thing he _can_ handle himself in a fight if he has to. Just him and the bus left, and it’s a pity he’d had to improvise there, or he’d have been able to use it as transport. 

“Ah, well. Hindsight’s twenty-twenty,” he sighs, shoves his hands into his pockets to retrieve his cigarettes. “S’pose the fresh air will be good for my heart, eh?” 

It’s an hour’s drive to Moorland from here; that’s a few hours of walking without the benefit of the Lonely. Peter lights a cigarette, sighs, and starts off on his way. 

* * * 

It only takes an hour or so for Peter to realise that geography is _not_ working as it should. The road in front of him splits off into two, and he stands at the fork at the top of a hill and peers out over the view to where the roads divide again, and then again, tiny tarmac capillaries spreading out over the fields and then fading out to nothing. 

“Well, that’s just damned unhelpful,” he mutters. He’s walking away from the Panopticon - actually, he’s doing his best not to pay it any mind at all - but it hovers in his periphery, large enough to follow him like the moon when he’s at sea. “S’pose a street sign would be too much to ask for?” 

Apparently so. The fields give way to a peat-bog, Peter’s boots sinking into the marshy ground as he plods determinedly onwards. 

“What’s _this_ one, then?” he grumbles, racking his brain for what he knows about bogs, of all things. “Terminus, is it? Seem to remember something about fully-preserved bodies being tugged out of these bogs, that seems like quite a good little reminder of the End. Didn’t think it’d be so quiet, but then, maybe that’s the point. Of course, maybe it’s just a bog, and I’m reading too much into it. Any insights, Elias?” 

Not even a blink from the eye. Peter isn’t even sure if that’s _Elias’_ eye or _the_ Eye, or just _an_ Eye. Whatever it is, the pressure of it feels like sunburn and he hunches himself deeper into his coat, eyeing the mist coiling over the wet ground. That, at least, is a good sign. 

“If you make me walk through a desert in this damn coat before I reach Kent I’m coming to that Panopticon to strangle you,” he adds irritably. Not a twitch, not a flicker. Talking to Elias isn’t making him feel better, really, but it’s marginally more sensible than talking to himself. 

His hands hurt. He can throw a punch, but he’s out of practice, and his knuckles are grazed and torn. It’s not the fight Peter’s been in, and he seems quite sure that it won’t be the last. The red mist of the Slaughter is an awful thing, and without the Lonely to cloud himself in it’s harder to bear through. 

That said, he is comforted by the fact that he hadn’t been entirely insensible. He still has enough presence of mind to not be completely susceptible to the other Entities, he can hold onto that. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll reach Moorland and find some haven in the Lonely, stay there until something else happens - or die there, perhaps - and that’ll be alright. 

He rubs the call at his neck, considers blowing it to call in the fog, but the prospect fills him with the same chilling, numbing fear as before. Still a victim, then. Perhaps it’s a matter of small amounts of exposure until his body reacclimates to it, until he remembers that he’s been kin to the One Alone for _decades_ and it ought to take more than one bespectacled runt to tear him from it. 

He wonders where the Archivist is, what things look like in the Highlands. At least out in the wilderness he’s unlikely to be accosted by masses. Peter shudders to think what London must look like, and Birmingham, and Manchester, and anywhere else where large groups can gather. 

Still, the world hasn’t changed all _that_ much. It’s changing, yes, even under Peter’s feet things are _changing_ , and he imagines that in another week people will scarcely remember that there was a time before the Eye, but for now things are stable enough. He has time, yet. 

It still takes him another three hours to reach Moorland House, and he stares up at the wrought-iron gates with a resigned look. They swing open easily enough, and his boots crunch against the gravel as he steps into the mist, swallowed near-instantly by the numbing chill of the Lonely. Or - well - the Lonely- _ish_. It’s not quite the Lonely, it _can’t_ be, because the gentle lull of seafoam and the breeze are utterly eclipsed by the eye. It sears through the fog and leaves Peter glaring right back up at it, folding his arms. 

“ _Really_ , Elias? The one place in the entire _universe_ where I might get a bit of peace and I can’t even have that?” he snaps. 

“I don’t think it’s personal.” 

Peter turns, raises his eyebrows. “Oh, well. No. It never is,” he sighs. Nathaniel looks like he’s seen better days; he’s pale enough to be almost translucent, bags shadowed under his eyes. “You’ve been fighting it, then.” 

“For what it’s worth,” Nathaniel mutters. “It is- it _wants_ -”

“It wants to be fed, yes,” Peter sighs. “You can’t constrain it here.” 

“I’m not _constraining_ -”

“Nathaniel. You cannot keep it here.” 

It’s not a surprise that Nathaniel has tried to clutch the disparate coils of the Lonely to his chest, to gather them up in the thickest mass he can and hide below them. But all that that will accomplish is the Lonely feeding on him, instead. 

“Why are _you_ here?” Nathaniel snaps, almost petulant, and Peter shrugs. 

“It was either this or wait to find out which Entity’s territory I was encroaching upon. I’m in no hurry to be made faceless.” 

“You should have killed him when you had the chance.” 

Peter can’t really disagree with that. He nods, shrugs. “Well, don’t give up hope just yet. He might be dead,” he says quietly, taking one look back up at the house. It’s a pity, really. He’d hoped that the Lonely might have some sort of a stronghold here but it’s fragile and fragmented. Given the right chance to feed it’ll strengthen itself, no doubt, in the same way that the Slaughter is bolstering itself wherever it can, as all the other Entities doubtless are. But the longer he waits for that to happen, the more chance there is of being fed on in lieu of any other suitable targets.

Before long, the whole of the world will be scarred with territories and the ley-lines of fear. Peter had hoped that the Lonely would settle here as a focal point. But perhaps they’re just not as good at being servants as they’d thought, and there’s somewhere else more fitting. Perhaps the Lonely just can’t function properly under the weight of Beholding. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. 

“What now, then?” Nathaniel asks, already hazy at the edges, eyes hungry. Peter looks at him askance, wonders if his traditional attitude to loyalty runs far enough that he won’t try to kill him to take Forsaken off the scent for a while. It’s always a possibility. Lukases are very Spartan with their children; but Peter has fought once today, and he’ll do it again if he has to, and Nathaniel is thirty years older and a good deal thinner than him even if he has the advantage of the Lonely on his side. 

What now, indeed. 

No way into the Lonely, clearly, not for the time being. No use sitting in Moorland to be pounced on by Nathaniel. Only danger ahead as the other Entities establish themselves. No steps forwards, no steps backwards, no side-steps into the mists to avoid conflict. Peter grimaces. Elias must be _loving_ this. 

“Right now,” he says cheerfully, rocking back onto his heels, “I’m going to fetch some supplies. Then I’ll be out of your hair, uncle.” 

Nathaniel doesn’t reply. Peter feels his eyes on him all the way up to the house, but that’s really nothing as compared to the Eye he feels on him, prickling through his coat. 

It has been an awfully long time since he had to prepare for any sort of journey, but he does have common sense enough to recognise that he’ll need something waterproof, something to sleep under, likely a weapon of some kind. Granted, his experiments on the train from Portsmouth have shown that he can pass more or less unnoticed when necessary (if not quite _invisible_ ), but it’s harder not to be noticed with that damned Eye shining down on everything, so best to be prepared for the worst. Peter is almost tempted to fetch one of the rifles from the cabinet - antique remnants from the days when the Lukas family took part in society - but he’s considerably more comfortable with his own fists. And really, anything out there that he encounters that he can’t kill with his own fists, he likely can’t kill with a gun either. 

So. Tent, bag, food, matches, torch. Not for the warmth, just for the light. All of this would be far easier if he could get to wherever he was going through the mists - but then, he doesn't really know where he’s going anyway, so it hardly matters. Best to treat it like an adventure. Like running away when he was a child, heading out for the joy of being alone with no other goal, no other aim in sight. 

It’s almost nostalgic. 

Thus equipped Peter glances sidelong at the mausoleum on his way out, lips flattened into a thin line. 

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. _You_ didn’t kill him either.” 

* * * 

Peter doesn’t know how long he walks for. Partly due to his own rather fragmented sense of time, partly due to the fact that there sky doesn’t seem to fade into day and night anymore. Not in any discernible pattern, anyway. Peter reaches a patch of blazing sunlight and stops next to a tree that is weeping blood in huge, glossy globules, thick and ripe like pomegranates. A little further on the ground goes unsteady like quicksand and Peter has to grab for a nearby stick to try and pull himself free only to swear vehemently as the stick turns out to be a withered arm that latches onto him with unnatural strength. 

Nothing is anything anymore, apparently. 

For the first while, everything is chaos. Peter sets his eyes forwards and tries to ignore the horizon blurring and shifting around him, that brief period where he is walking upside down, and then in on himself, where each step he takes gives him a clearer view of the inside of his own skull. There is a ringing in his ears and he wants to hum to drown it out but decides against it; whatever it is that’s tormenting him now, the more he ignores it, the more like it is to ignore him. If he is not afraid, then there is nothing to feed on. 

The others he passes aren’t so lucky. 

The corpses are alright, really. One dead body looks much the same as another bar a little variety in just how _much_ of it is left. A burned one here, a torn one there. Peter passes a few injured and dying and stops to have a word, to pass them off to the Lonely instead. 

It’s not a mercy. Anything but. They’ll live longer in there but more painfully, and every moment of it afraid. But Peter is not - typically - a merciful man. And with each new victim it feels a little more natural, a little more familiar, and perhaps one day he’ll stop feeling the cold in his own fingertips when he throws them through. 

The corpses start decreasing in number after a while; Peter watches some get up and start again, wounds healing as they pull detached teeth from the punctures in their arms, their necks. “Up and at ‘em,” he says cheerfully, and goes ignored. 

What’s worse than the bodies is those things that are not _quite_ bodies, too many limbs, or strange and twisted, clawing or flaming or shrieking, and the _noise_ of it, the stench of it- Peter finds himself thinking almost fondly of the sound of cars going by Elias’ house, the grating whistle of birdsong, all of that would be preferable to this. There is little space for quiet in a place like this. It’s the rat-a-tat of machine guns or the crack and lurch of breaking bones, it’s the overwhelming noise of wailing and moaning and screeching that is nearly impossible to escape from. It's getting harder and harder to think through it. 

For now, though, he is left struggling through the quagmire of sucking mud that clutches his boots and his ankles, leaves him gritting his teeth and pressing onwards past the sounds of wailing and half-articulated misery. The land is soggy and yielding, pitted like an orchard ripe for sowing, except each little hole contains a shrieking, clawing, dirt-caked face. All mud and silt and the eyes showing white and stark against the darkness within. Peter wonders if they’ll still be screaming in a few days’ time. 

Has it been a few days? It’s hard to say. He hasn’t slept, but then he hasn’t _needed_ to. Nor has he touched any of the food in his backpack. He has walked, and stopped, and walked again. He has watched the sun move in strange and elliptical shapes across the sky, watched the weather change in front of his eyes. He has been doing a lot of _watching_ , which is really just salt in the wound, but until he finds somewhere - or something - suitable to do, it’s far safer to be on the move. Those small communities that are banding themselves together are suffering enough and suspicious enough to be dangerous. 

Peter does give thought to stopping in one of those. Granted, most of them are claimed or marked already, but delivering a village full of people to the Lonely wouldn’t be hard. Rather a lot of effort to make them trust him, though, rather a lot of risk to be caught up as something else’s prey before he’s in a space to hunt himself. 

Better, overall, to keep moving. 

* * * 

There is a hand sticking out of the mud. 

That’s not exceptional in itself - there are _lots_ of hands in the mud, here, all being dragged slowly down. This stretch of marshy, clay-like land seems to go on forever but the screaming has died down to a sobbing and a wailing, to soft, wet moans that don’t sound quite human, to the squelch and slide of bodies over bodies. 

And yet - there is a hand, here, sticking out of the mud. Fingers splayed, nails dirt-caked, the skin grey with a thin covering of clay that is drying in the sun. 

Peter nudges it with his boot, quite against his better judgement, and it latches onto his ankle. He hisses with irritation, shaking his ankle to dislodge it, only to suddenly feel himself fall-

And fall-

And fall again-

One endless arc against a suddenly endless sky. End over end, breath ripped from his lungs before he can make a sound, quite alone and hurtling towards an end that might never quite come-

When the world stops spinning he is still upright (thank _God_ ) and staring at the hand he’s kicked free of his boot, now-flailing wildly, fingers shaking like pale and windblown blades of grass. They don’t look wrinkled but it’s hard to tell with all the grime and Peter frowns, conflicted. 

If it _is_ Fairchild, he likely owes him a favour somewhere along the line. And a lift wouldn’t be any bad thing. 

He reaches down to grip the bony wrist and feels delicate, bird-like bones shifting under his hand as he plants his weight and pulls. 

For a few wrenching moments there is nothing. It’s like trying to uproot a building, grasping for leverage against a mountain. And then Peter is moving, but entirely in the wrong direction, mud bubbling against his ankles, his knees. His shoulders are burning and his knees ache and something in the mud is whispering, is singing to him, the moan of its inhabitants saying wouldn’t it be nice, wouldn’t it just be so nice to rest, to _sleep_? Wouldn’t it be lovely just to _stop_? 

Peter grits his teeth and clamps down on any fear, tugs again, keeps his grip firm even as he feels bones shift and grind and pop under his palm - there’s a snap, there, a crack. He ignores it.

“Upsy-get, Fairchild,” he grunts through gritted teeth, “time to _go_.” 

First the wrist, then the elbow, and then all at once in a sucking, writhing mass, Peter pulls someone - something - out of the earth. There is no time to examine who it is, not when Peter is so thoroughly involved in struggling himself free of the clenching mud that clutches at his knees, his thighs, rippling like a throat, like he is being digested, his own grunts and the wet, whimpering coughs of whatever he has just rescued the only soundtrack. 

The only thing he wants to do when he bursts himself free is to lie down on the ground and breathe, but that’s not an option for as long as they’re here. Peter bends to pick up whatever he has just freed, tossing it over his shoulder (it’s _small_ , further evidence for Fairchild) and setting off with a determined stride. No fear. No terror, not here. He has one arm cradled over the body in his grip, the other hanging limp at his side, the shoulder having been popped right out of its socket as if the dirt would take him piece by piece if it had to. 

Too close, that. Too-close-he-cannot-breathe. Peter shudders all over. 

It is a long time before the ground gets firmer beneath them. Peter throws down the body on his shoulder and slumps down to put his shoulder back where it ought to be, only then turning to look at whoever it is. 

He’s not gentle about sluicing water over its face, quite ignoring the spluttering sounds he gets in response, scrubbing a rough palm over soft and sun-starved skin to reveal the features beneath. There are fine lines there that could be wrinkles but they feel odd against his hand, and the more skin Peter uncovers the more he’s forced to admit that he’s expended all of that energy for some willo-the-wisp, a mere spriteling of the Vast, one of Fairchild’s little protegés. 

He lets go, disgusted, pulling away to let the Vastling breathe and splutter and choke, curled in on himself and whimpering. It’s a few minutes before he seems able to speak, still hacking dirt and clay from his throat, but that suits Peter just fine too. 

“You broke my wrist-” he rasps, finally, and Peter scoffs. 

“Tugging you from the Buried’s tender embrace, yes, I suppose I did.” 

That gets a sniff, another series of wracking coughs, and then he reaches out with his good arm, one pale hand splayed towards Peter in supplication. Peter blinks at it for a moment before he remembers the bottle of water and rolls his eyes, handing it over and watching him drink deeply. Once he’s had his fill he flops onto his back and stares upwards, squinting into the Eye. 

“Oh. That’s new.” 

“Is it?” Peter tilts his head. “How long were you down there for?” 

“Too long. I- I don’t remember what- he said he came _alone-_ ” 

“Mmhm.” Peter rolls his eyes, letting the stammering wash over him without taking much of it in, digging in his coat pocket for that pack of cigarettes. Running low. He ought to be rationing them, but given he was nearly sucked into the earth himself today, he feels inclined to indulge a bit. There aren’t many simple pleasures left in a world like this. “Your name?” 

“Mike. Mike Crew.” 

“Mm.” Had Simon mentioned him before? It’s possible. He seems to collect his little group strangely, sends them spiralling off into the wind like dandelion seeds and then gathers them back when it suits him. Peter doesn’t understand it, himself, but there’s a lot about Simon he doesn’t understand. “I’m Peter.” 

“Lukas?”

“Yes. You’ve heard of me.” 

“Yeah. Is there- what’s _happened_?” 

A fair question. Peter looks askance at Mike, considering. He’d be an easy enough sacrifice. But then, he _does_ owe Simon that favour. And perhaps having saved his life, he might be inclined to give him a lift. Not that he knows where he’s getting to, especially, except that he wants to be wherever that Panopticon _isn’t_. It’s a grim shadow on the horizon and even though Peter knows he’s hardly being picked out, it’s hard not to feel that that constant reminder of its presence is something that Elias has done to spite him. 

Dangerous. Dangerous thoughts. Elias has scarcely paid him any consideration in his plans except as a conduit, and he’d be better off remembering that. 

“End of the world, Mr Crew,” Peter replies with forced jollity. “Enjoy your stay. I’d say enjoy your _flight_ , but I shouldn’t think you’ll want to soar off into that in a hurry.” 

“Not yet,” Mike agrees slowly, feeling his swollen wrist gingerly. “I think I- reckon I just need to rest, a bit.” 

“Mm?” 

“Will you-” Mike grimaces, clearly discomfited, “look, will you just- don’t let anything take me. The ground, I mean. I can’t climb a tree, not with my wrist like this, and I’m not strong enough to do anything else, and I- j-just don’t let it take me again. Please.” 

Peter watches Mike for a moment, eyebrows raised in genuine surprise. An honest request for help. Well. There’s a thing. 

“Alright.” He says eventually, taking a drag of his cigarette and shrugging. While his shoulder is still aching he’s in no hurry to put the backpack on, so it’s no skin off his nose. “You just rest, then.” 

“Thank you.” 

Polite young man, Mr Crew. Peter watches him curl himself into a ball, coiled like an ammonite he might have fished from the shoreline. A rest, for now at least, can’t hurt. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter's apocalyptic fun-time begins!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unrestrained summer fun

“-only offered him a cup of tea before he started _questioning_ me, asking about my scar, and-”

Peter is looking straight ahead. It’s the only sensible thing to do when the horizon is a circle, when the whole world is fish-eyed and in the wrong colours. Mike’s voice sounds stretched out one second and compressed the next, syllables popping like bubbles in his ears, his bones crackling and snapping under his skin. 

“-don’t think he was expecting to be _dropped_ like that, really, he looked like he’d never felt anything like it before-”

The domains are starting to settle properly, now, and for all that Peter can still see the Panopticon off in the distance, it’s getting harder and harder to map where one thing starts and another begins. There are delineations, strips of ground which are more or less neutral, but the transition from the Dark to the Corruption to the Spiral to the Stranger can be very sudden. If he’d known they’d end up walking through a patch owned by the Spiral he’d have prepared better, but then, what was preparation for something like this. 

“-the door when _something_ hit me, felt like a double-decker bus with teeth to be honest with you and I barely saw it-”

“That so?” Peter mutters, mainly to show willing. Mike Crew _talks_ a lot. The grating of his voice is awful, like nails being hammered into the back of his neck, like claws being poked through the frail skin between his fingers, but it’s _time-keeping_. It gives some indication of how long they’ve walked for, and perhaps that’s why Mike is so keen on recounting the story of his own death, too - it’s an assurance that he is still here, that he is alive and no longer caught within the grasp of the Buried. 

None of which makes Peter any more keen to _hear_ it, but there it is. He doesn’t want to argue about it either. Any confrontation more long-winded than a sharp blow to the back of the head is - draining. It requires a level of contact and familiarity that Peter has with _very_ few people, and shouldn’t have with any, and certainly doesn’t have with Michael Crew. 

“-woke up in the ground, and then- and then-” Peter glances sidelong to see Mike looking vaguely green, and he’s not sure if that’s nausea or just the pallid wash of light over the land. He looks at his hand to check and, no, his own skin looks blue-grey. It goes in waves, in pulses, and in the next moment Peter knows when he looks at his hand he’ll see it sprouting spines like a cactus, or crumbling on itself like sand. Best not to think about it. 

“Doesn’t bear thinking about,” he says when it’s clear that Mike isn’t equipped to keep up the recounting. “One foot in front of the other.”

“Don’t- if you say things like that then I’ll start counting my feet and that was _unpleasant_ last time.”

“Could be worse.” 

It could be much worse. A bit of delusional hallucination, a bit of ragged synaesthesia clawing at the walls of the skull, they’re getting off _easy_. Mike makes an uneasy sound next to him as the light changes again, sharply fluorescent and smelling overwhelmingly of copper and roses, the colours and textures of the sky and the hills ahead blurring, melting into one another, swapping until Peter squints into the horizon and tries not to think too hard about walking on the sky. That ought to be a comfort for Mike at least, but when he glances sidelong again Mike looks _thoroughly_ unhappy. 

“It’s like...it’s like when you go through a black hole, it’s….” he makes a wobbly gesture with arms that are far too long, and Peter shrugs. Physics aren’t his strength. Mike is trying to get a word out, little _spuh, spuh_ noises spilling from him, but his tongue flops uselessly from his mouth and his teeth are too-soft, malleable, changing, and Peter drags his leg (spined and insect-like, feathered and coiled, a ball he tries to roll) onwards. One foot - limb - step in front of the next. Something - perhaps something that was once someone - rips across the sky like lightning, shrieking and weeping and laughing, and Peter hears an answering cackle torn from Mike’s chest along with a hacking series of coughs. 

He’s still coughing up dirt and clay. Peter is surprised, really, that he hasn’t yet tried to disappear off into the sky, to dissolve into the vast vacuum between atoms, to find a dark sea and dive right in, but then - well. He’s not going to drive him away, either. Not because he’s keen on the _company_ (God forbid) but because at some point, he might be in need of a lift. 

To where - he isn’t sure. He’s going to put that down to the fact it’s hardly to pinpoint what exactly a where or a when _is_ in a place like this. 

“Why are we not-” Mike’s talking again. Peter breathes out slowly through his nose and looks at him, watches his face melting and changing, skin shifting like a ripple over water. “Why are we not _changed_? Properly, I mean. Like-” Mike gestures to the sky where oil-slick clouds (textured like grass, clumping like dirt) form vague faces, shapes that could be hands, “like them. Like _victims_.” 

Peter shrugs again. “I’m a trespasser here, not a _victim,_ ” he says eventually, because it’s his best guess. Proximity to one Entity or another might give them some insulation, the way it insulates them from Terminus for a while. “Best not to linger too long before the effect wears off, but for now, I seem to be able to travel well enough.” 

Mike makes a face, clearly not especially reassured by that explanation. Just as well to get that out of the way rather than seek reassurance from _him_ of all people. Peter sighs, heaves himself onwards. 

“Can’t you - I don’t know. Take us out of here?” Mike asks a moment later, and Peter snorts. 

“Can’t _you_?” 

Silence. 

_Blissful_. 

So, Mike Crew had a run-in with the Archivist and ended up deep in the ground. Really, Peter didn’t think he’d had it in him. Even having been torn apart by him, the Archivist doesn’t strike him as especially vengeful. It doesn’t surprise him that he’d gone poking his nose in where it didn’t belong - that was par for the course with Archivists, after all - but that he’d committed an avatar of the Vast to the ground...well. It’s almost sadistic. Peter’s almost _impressed_. No longer Elias likes him so much. 

No sooner has Peter thought the name than he’s scowling again, shoving his hands into his pockets only to feel them going down and down and down, through where his legs should be, tangling with themselves, nerves webbing between his fingers like a cat’s cradle - he withdraws his hands with a grimace. On and on. 

He has a nominal plan. 

  1. Keep moving
  2. Don’t get killed by anything
  3. Find somewhere quiet and settle there until either the world decides it’s not ending anymore, he regains the ability to walk into the Lonely on his own terms, or he dies of old age within the apocalypse. 



Okay, it’s not a _detailed_ plan. But it will serve, for now. 

* * * 

“That’s going to need splinting.” 

They’re on neutral ground - as much as _any_ ground is neutral - and now that Peter can differentiate Mike’s arm from the air, from the ground, from the rain-that-is-not-rain, he can see that his wrist is twisted all at the wrong angle. Mike huffs out an irritable breath but nods, lips pursed. 

“Yeah. I just- I mean, I’m not a _doctor_.” 

Peter gives him a flat look. They can hardly go wandering in search of a _medic_. Mike holds his gaze for a moment and then groans, pressing his good hand to his face. 

“I know - I _know_. I just - look, I don’t want anything touching me that’s not _me_. Not if I can help it. Nothing _holding_ me. Honestly, it’s a miracle I’m still wearing clothes.” 

“Oh, lucky me,” Peter snorts, shaking his head and eyeing a nearby tree. If he snaps off a branch, will it _stay_ a branch? 

“You’re the one that _broke_ it.” 

“Saving your life.” 

“I _know_.” 

“Seems to me that you’re being a _little_ ungrateful.” 

“Spend some time in the Buried and see how grateful _you_ feel, why don’t you?” 

Peter gestures to the Eye above them by way of an answer, grimacing. “I am- currently experiencing my fair share of _discomfort,_ I think.” 

Silence. Mike walks over to the tree to try and find a suitable branch, picks one and snaps it off. Peter tilts his head, mildly interested, watching him try and press it to his wrist only to break off instantly, hissing with pain. 

“ _Fuck_. I- Christ, how do I- no, okay, I’ll try-” another attempt, another muffled noise of pain. Dear, oh dear. No fortitude in these younger ones, is there? Peter rolls his shoulder back, testing it, the sharper pain of earlier having settled into a duller ache as it starts to heal. 

“Maybe if you’d done this earlier, you wouldn’t be having such difficulty,” he volunteers brightly, and Mike glowers at him. 

“Maybe if you weren’t _distracting_ me, I’d be having more luck.” 

“Oh, my mistake. By all means, Mr Crew, amaze me with your medical prowess.” Peter sits down by the trunk of the tree, putting his backpack to the side with a heavy sigh. “Fairchild really doesn’t teach you lot anything, does he? _He’d_ know how to do this, I’m sure.” Mike shoots him a venomous look and Peter smiles right back. “I’m surprised he left you down there. He’s been in London, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to where _you_ were languishing.” 

He’s not sure what reaction he expects, really, but Mike just laughs, shakes his head. 

“Oh, he probably didn’t notice. I mean - we’re not exactly close.” 

“No?” 

“No, he - I mean, after I-” Mike makes another vague gesture, something fluid and airy that Peter can’t follow and doesn’t really try to, “after the Titan took me he showed me the ropes. We drop in on each other, sometimes, me and him, and the others, sometimes we go to America for a break, but it’s not - I mean, that sort of _anchoring_. It’s not really us.”

“Hm.” Peter has heard awful rumours about Simon dragging all the little Vastlings off for some hideous parody of family dinners. _Risi e bisi_ , just like Tintoretto used to make. It sounds _unbearable_. “He is a flighty one. Maybe he _didn’t_ notice.”

“I don’t really think it matters.” Mike is speaking through gritted teeth, jaw working as he pokes at his wrist. “What happens if I _don’t_ splint this?” 

“I’ve no idea. It’s your body.” 

“That’s not helpful.” 

“I know.” 

Another few minutes of silence. Peter watches clouds drift over the Eye like cataracts, sometimes coiling, sometimes sheetlike. It’s a while before Mike stands and walks over to him, thrusting out his injured arm with his lips flattened into a line. 

“Will you do it?” 

Peter tilts his head, genuinely surprised at that. “Really? Scorpions and frogs, Michael.” 

“It’s Mike. And it’s not like you can make it _worse_.” 

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Peter says softly, nodding to the patch of ground next to him. “Alright. Take a seat.” 

Funny boy, Mr Crew. Out in the wilderness with an avatar of the Lonely and he’s putting himself in his hands. Willingly, even. Peter would ascribe it to naivety but - well, he isn’t sure. Not that it matters. At any rate he takes hold of the stick and reaches into his backpack to find some bandages (because he _has_ packed for the apocalypse, after all). “You’ll want to bite down on something. I’m not a doctor, so there may be a bit of, ah - trial and error.” 

“Right.” He’s back to looking distinctly green again. Peter smiles at him.

“It won’t be _that_ bad. You’ll see.” 

Cold comfort. And it does nothing to stop Mike from screaming. 

* * * 

Another marshland. Poor old Mike is having _no_ fun sinking into the ground up to his knees and all but dissolving into hysteria every time, flailing wildly to try and reach solid ground again only to find it soft and waterlogged and yielding. 

He’s ranting about the Archivist again. Whether that’s because it makes him feel better or because the moments before his burial are still scraping around and around the walls of his skull, Peter isn’t sure, and doesn’t care to ask. 

“-just seems to me he could have shown a bit of _respect_ ,” Mike spits, and Peter _does_ laugh at that, a harsh bark of sound, because _really_. 

“Respect? He’s an _Archivist_. They’ve never had any respect.” 

“They ought to learn some,” Mike replies grimly, and Peter shakes his head a little. 

“And I suppose you’re the one to teach him?” 

“Let’s see him ask his questions when he’s falling at terminal velocity. Not so smart _then_ ,” he mutters. Peter gives him a considering look. 

On the one hand, he’s right, Archivists are wholly without respect, without boundaries, without any sense of propriety or distance. On the other hand, Mike Crew is a breath of wind, a tiny speck in the cosmos - even in the grand scheme of nothing mattering (if the Vast is to believed) he really _doesn’t_ matter. A bold, fiery young man, all passion and vim and spit, all fired up to take on the world…

Under the circumstances, Peter really doesn’t feel very guilty about grabbing Mike by the legs and holding him upside down in the nearest puddle until the lurching vertigo and the ozone in his nose fade to something a bit more manageable. And he can’t rant and rave when he’s slung unconscious over Peter’s shoulder. 

* * * 

“Where is it we’re even _going_ ,” Mike sighs plaintively, and Peter lifts his eyes to the sky and wonders if Elias is enjoying this little show. 

“ _I_ am going to find somewhere quiet. _You_ are following me.” 

“Safety in numbers,” Mike replies, something mutinous and defiant in his expression.

“Do you feel especially safe? You’ve still got weeds in your hair.” 

“Oh, _fuck off_.” Peter shrugs, concedes the point. There aren’t any convenient puddles to throw him into, and he’s not got the strength to argue that _one_ Avatar is a draw enough on anything’s attention, _two_ is really pushing it. But Mike doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and in the absence of the option to just walk off into the mists, he’s simply going to have to live with it for the time being. “Anyway. It’s not like you’ve left. Thought you lot could just waltz off into the air like us.” 

Damn. 

“Well, then so can you,” he replies with as much equanimity as he can summon, all of that forced affability that’s served him well in the past. “Why haven’t you?” 

Mike grimaces, eyes sliding uncomfortably from side to side. “It’s - I haven’t - I-I mean, I _want_ to. I do. But the whole _point_ of falling is that you’re falling into nothingness. That-” he gestures upwards, “isn’t nothing.” 

“Doesn’t feel quite like home, does it,” Peter sighs, and Mike snorts. 

“We’re not in Kansas anymore.” 

Nonsensical, some of the stuff he comes out with. 

“It must be,” Peter says softly, “a very strange thing, to be afraid of that which you love most.” He isn’t sure why he says it. Actually, he regrets it the moment the words leave his lips and he feels Mike’s eye ( _the Eye)_ on him, burning, prickling, making his shoulders hunch. 

“Must be,” Mike says finally, looking away from him. Peter is distinctly uncomfortable with how relieved he feels about that. “So, er - we’re both stuck walking.” 

“That’s right.” 

“Hm.” Mike shoves his hands into his damp pockets, kicks irritably at a rock. “Can’t remember the last time I _walked_ anywhere. Not for a long trip.” 

“Think of it as a holiday.” 

“We could play _I Spy_.” 

Peter can’t stop the pained expression that flits over his face at that and he rubs a hand over his eyes, grimacing. “Let’s _not_.” 

* * * 

There is a buzzing in Mike’s pocket. 

Mike’s waterlogged, marsh-dampened, clay-sodden pocket. 

Three pulses, a pause. Three pulses, a pause. _S, S, S._

Peter leans his head back against the sandbank and feels the buzz travel through the ground and into his bones, sighing heavily. “Are you going to get that?” 

Mike looks for a moment like he might refuse. There’s something strange and fearful in his features and just for a second he looks very, very young. The next moment he’s plunged his hand into his pocket to pull out an old flip-phone. Peter remembers when Elias had had one of those, hot off the production line, had delighted in _snapping_ it shut whenever someone irritated him. 

“‘Lo?” Mike says tentatively into the device and Peter closes his eyes, lets himself settle against the sand. It’s far, far too warm to be the crunching softness of the Forsaken, but he can run the grains through his fingers and pretend, all the same, makes an hourglass of his hands and waits for the inevitable. 

The inevitable, in this case, being a poke of Mike’s finger against his shoulder, Peter cracking open an eye to see him extending the phone in his direction. 

“It’s- it’s for you.” Mike looks relieved. Peter looks at the phone, looks back at Mike, raises his eyebrows. 

“Sorry. I’m not here. Take a message, won’t you?” 

“I’m not your _secretary_.” 

Peter shrugs, closes his eyes again. There’s a brief, tense silence, and then a rush of air out of Mike that sounds very much like him throwing his hands up in the air in disgust. 

“He’s asked me to _take a message_ ,” he mutters into the phone, making a little _tch_ noise. Peter wonders if Mike will feel inclined to drop him for his _disrespect_ , briefly entertains the notion of making him into a tent-peg for the night. Not that they’re sleeping. Or setting up camp, really. But it’s a nice thought, all the same. 

“Yeah, I know, he is, isn’t he,” Mike grumbles, and Peter’s lips twitch into a smile. “Yeah, he- oh. Really? Well, I don’t think he- no, obviously I don’t _know_ that- well, why _would_ I? No- yeah, _okay_. Okay. I’ll pass it on. I’m fine, by the way, thanks for asking, Annie.” 

Mike snaps the phone closed just like Elias used to; Peter hears the little _click_ with a rush of strange nostalgia. _Nostalgia_. Not an emotion encouraged within the Forsaken, and yet here he is. Sterling work, all around. 

“Well?” Mike snaps, and Peter chuckles. 

“Well what?” 

“Aren’t you going to ask?” 

“Mm. No.” 

Those little pauses where Peter infuriates or bemuses Mike so much he can scarcely speak are _so_ sweet. It’s almost worth the nagging knowledge that he ought to be making more of his would-be companion, that for all the convenience of a potential lift (getting less likely by the hour given Mike’s apparent fear of the skies), he ought to have sacrificed him by now. 

“That was Annabel.” 

“Who?” 

“Annabel Cane.” 

“And again I ask…” 

“Do you live in a _cave?_ ” 

“I live on a ship.” 

“She’s one of the Mother’s.” 

“Ah.” 

“She says- well. She says you should stay away from the Archivist.” 

“Does she, now.” 

“Yeah. Pretty, er. Insistent about it.” 

“Oh?” Peter turns his head towards Mike, opens his eyes again, blinks at him. “Threatening, was she?” 

Mike screws up his face, tilts his head from side to side. “I mean - define _threatening_. She said you’d regret it if you didn’t. She wasn’t really more specific than that.” 

“Hm.” Peter levers himself upright, brushing sand from his trousers. “Well, what’s one more regret.” 

“Wait- _what_?” Mike scrambles upright as well, bracing himself on his good arm as his feet slide against the sand. “You’re ignoring her?” 

“Seem to be.” 

“But - I mean, were you even planning on finding him at all?” 

“Not really.” 

“But you are now.” 

“S’pose so.” 

“You’re just going to- what, flagrantly go against what she says she wants.’ 

“Ah, but what if she _really_ wants me to go after the Archivist after all, and it’s a double bluff? Or what if she knew I’d think it a double bluff, and it’s a _triple_ bluff? _Or_ what if-”

“O- _kay_. You’ve made your point, I think.” 

“Well, if you’re sure. I wouldn’t want you to think that any of this was unclear.” 

“You... _God_ , you’re annoying.” 

“You charmer, you.” Peter shoulders his backpack with a grin and heads off forwards once again. 

* * * 

He has a nominal plan. 

  1. Find the Archivist
  2. Don’t get immediately killed by the Archivist 
  3. Assuming success of steps one and two, consider next moves accordingly.. 



Steps one and two are hard enough, mind. _Finding_ the Archivist is easier said than done; after all, they are still left wandering through the depths of the fearscape with no helpful signposts saying “scrawny knowledge-leech seven miles”. Step two is - tenuous. 

And after that, well. It depends. If the Archivist is coherent enough to be reasoned with, then perhaps he’ll see his way through to explaining exactly how Peter can get back into the Lonely without being its _victim_. That’ll do him just fine. But it would be a mercy, and Archivists aren’t - on the whole - merciful. 

On the other hand, the Archivist might be entirely outside of himself. Bound to the Eye, dedicated to the cause, a true believer. If that’s the case then he might as well just walk to the Panopticon to confront Elias himself for all the good it’d do him. 

That thought has occurred too. Keeps occurring. Peter doesn’t _want_ to see him, to see what’s become of him now that all of his ambitions have been realised. He doesn’t want to know if Elias is still _Elias_ , or just a husk like his original body. He doesn’t want to think about it. 

He can’t stop thinking about it. 

They’re clambering over shale, now, towards dark cliffs. The light is dimmer here and the green glow of the Eye glimmers at the edges of the rockface like phosphorescence, sparkling and mesmerising, dancing lights behind Peter’s eyes when he closes them. Every time they take a step there’s a clatter of sharp-edged stones, a rockslide just waiting to happen, and Peter eyes the cliffs warily. 

He can’t tell what domain they’re in, which one they might be approaching. Judging by the despondent look on Mike’s face it’s not the Vast, more’s the pity, and the clattering sound of stone on stone is setting Peter’s teeth on edge. There are larger stones in amongst the gravel, hunched like huge-shouldered beasts, the hiss of the wind like the steaming breaths of something massive and intimidating. Peter shifts his weight, frowns up at the cliffs. 

“Doesn’t look like there’s much of a path. I imagine I’ll find my way up _one_ way or another, mind, but all the same…” there’s no obvious in-route, no slope, no handholds in the sheer, dark rock. Not that it matters, since there’s still a mile at least of shifting gravel to get through, and the tide’s coming in. “Better get a move on,” he calls over his shoulder and Mike gives him the finger with his good hand, palms already scraped bloody by the rock. Peter can smell the copper past the ozone, feels something strange and urgent at the back of his throat. 

He _should_ have killed him by now. He could kill him now. He could bring the mists down and yes, he’d be a victim himself, but wouldn’t it be worth it for the _meal_ , for the satisfaction of it, of reaching out to clasp his hand around something small and vulnerable and feel it _caught_ -

Peter can feel a prickle at the back of his neck. Mike has caught up, now, has his hand braced against his knees as he catches his breath, and Peter-

Peter can still hear the shale shifting. 

Peter can smell Mike’s blood on the air. 

Peter can feel eyes on the back of his skull and oh, the wind _does_ sound like something breathing, like the humid, ragged panting of a stalking terror. 

“Mike,” he says softly, and Mike gives a little hum of acknowledgement. “When I say the word - _dodge_.” 

“Wait - _what_? What’s going-”

 _“Now_.” 

Credit where it’s due, he _does_. Throws himself to the side, as does Peter, just in time for something massive and craggy-limbed to land where they’d been, claws glinting bone-white against the rock, tongue lolling huge and red and dripping with blood-foamed spit. Its eyes are huge and white and clouded over, but Peter has no doubt that it can see him regardless, whether by its eyes or by some other means. He scarcely has time to finish the thought before it pounces again, rocks shifting under its paws, and Peter throws himself sideways again, scrambling to his feet as fast he can, hissing as the shards scrape against his palms. 

“ _Run_!” he snaps - as if Mike needs the encouragement. For all of his earlier clumsiness his feet are barely touching the ground, now, and Peter spares a moment to wish that the world had decided to end itself when he was at least _younger_. His body isn’t built for this sort of motion. 

The beast is righting itself, a snarl tearing through the air like thunder, and Peter does his best to zig-zag though it’s no easier for him than it will be for the being of the Hunt, _really_ \- to the cliff-face, he needs to get to the cliff-face, even if he isn’t sure what he’ll _do_ at the cliff-face - and his palms are numb already from the pain, perhaps what’s why he only notices the chill of the mist when it’s up to his waist, grits his teeth and tries to resist the urge to just disappear there where it’s safe, where it’s quiet, where he can’t be torn to shreds by a blood-crazed beast. 

The beast isn’t faring well on the shale. Funny for the Hunt to make itself a domain so ill-suited for the Hunter, but then, that’s the balance, isn’t it? Peter remembers that from a documentary or two (Elias drinking it all in, of course, any new discovery, anything at all), the balance and the rhyme of it all. Most hunts end in failure. Most hunts end in failure. Most hunts, most hunts-

He hears a growl against his ear and throws himself to the side again, feels a heavy paw thud against his backpack instead of his shoulder. The impact bats it sideways so fast that Peter’s body is lurched with it, hurled down towards the coming tide, into the mists he’s trying _not_ to fall into, and he remembers - 

God, he remembers the first touch of the mist, that first chilling coil against his chest, that getting-to-know-you stage of blinding, numbing terror that had felt so very right, that had made him weep with fear and joy all at once, he remembers tamping down the fear and the joy both into what was right and good, the gentle numbness of being entirely alone, the solace of solitude, he remembers, he remembers-

He is _afraid_. 

There are rocks under his shoulderblades, and there is sand, and there is a paw on his chest and breath on his face that smells of copper and blood and the sharp, growing scent of ozone and Peter-

Feels the blinding, burning pressure of the Eye sear through the mists like they’re water-vapour, shimmering like an oil-slick as they dissipate, feels the beast cringe away with a howl, hears a voice he only vaguely recognises say “ _There_ you are-” 

Feels a hand on his shoulder. 

Feels the whole world drop, drop, drop away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mike & Peter really are the world's worst father-son duo 
> 
> Apologies for the delay in this chapter, this week has been _appalling_. More to come soon. Kudos & comments fuel and sustain me.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A cosy cabin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short one! But I wouldn't want you to think I'd forgotten about oz, so in advance of the end of act 1, here we are <3

_There is a place, deep in the heart of fear, where you trap yourself and claim that it is safety._

The walls are creaking more, these days. Or maybe he’s just noticing it more. When he stands, when he walks, the structure of this place feels like it’s bending to him, around him, or - no, bending around the next room. The whole building is quivering like something ready to burst and split open, a seed pod, a puff of dandelion seeds. 

Martin stifles a sigh and goes in search of a cup of tea. 

It’s not a cup of tea, really, because there is no _tea_ now, but there’s still something meditative about setting the kettle on the stove and heating the water, letting the whistle of the boiling water drown out the wind outside, just for a few seconds. All the noise is piercing and oppressive, but at least he can pick how long the kettle goes on for. 

Choice is important. 

Right now, for example, he is choosing not to go into the next room where he knows Jon is listening to those bloody tapes again. He is choosing to ignore the packed rucksacks tucked by the front door (where Jon hasn’t seen them, yet, because he’s not been by the front door, has barely ventured out of the bedroom in a few days). He is choosing to stay. 

He can’t hear what Jon’s saying, but he can hear the low shape of the words through the walls, leaden and ominous in that way they only are when Jon is-

Well, not _talking_. Narrating. Broadcasting. Archiving. Whatever it is. Syllables dropped, pendulous, from his tongue, clicking against his teeth on the way down, inevitable like a flood, like water pooling against sodden soil and forcing its way to lie on top of the surface. Jon’s not himself. That’s fine. Martin’s not himself either. 

At least they _are_ safe here. Martin had been braced for a siege of some sort, setting traps like _Home Alone_ , like the big confrontation in _Skyfall_ , Jonah coming over the hill with an army to fix his Eye upon their little cabin, but instead they’ve been left entirely alone. Martin pours himself his mug of hot water and swirls a teaspoon through it anyway, watching the coiling steam, and then squints at the curtained window to where he can see the sickly green glow of the Eye. 

“So, what, you’re playing hard to get now? Sending him tapes, letting him know you’re _thinking_ of him, and now you’re just - waiting?” He’s going for a tone of righteous indignation but he’s just _tired_ of it. Ever since that box of tapes arrived, Jon’s been like a man possessed. 

Click, spin. Click, spin. Rewind. Repeat. Again. 

Hearing all of their voices again is like a physical blow. Tim, Sasha. Jon. Jon sounds so different. There’s a very strange pull in Martin’s chest when he hears that, the urge to wrap Jon up in his arms and keep him safe. And he can hug Jon, yeah, but - Jon as he is now. Not Jon as he was then, fussy, uptight, desperately trying to impress. 

Instead he just stammers on the tapes, eager to please, desperate to impress. God. Funny how priorities shift. 

Click, spin. 

Martin carries his mug to the door of the bedroom, pauses by the door despite himself to listen, just for a moment. 

_Something moves outside, struggling to crawl. It shudders, and grips the earth, pulling itself along as nails rip free and skin shakes loose. It is afraid of what it has become, and where it might be going._

Right. So far, so spooky, then. 

So far the Apocalypse is a matter of little rituals. Martin sleeps, even though his sleep is mainly populated by strange and awful dreams, and every time he wakes up he can feel Jon’s eyes on him in the dark. Jon looks so _afraid_ for him. There’s nothing Martin can say or do to diminish that fear, not really. All the kisses and soft words in the world are only temporary balm to the constant, driving terror that is pulsing under Jon’s skin every second and-

“There I go sounding like a statement again,” he mumbles to himself (to the tape-recorder which isn’t sat on the kitchen table, but might have been a few months ago) and goes to check the rucksacks again. 

Inventory. A matter of numbers and small calculations. How many carabiners, how many feet of rope, how pocket-knives and pitons and tent-pegs might they need, together. It’s a soothing little routine, in its way, counting out the contents and packing them up again neatly, it lets Martin know that they’re ready to leave on a moment’s notice. 

If Jon ever decides he’s ready to leave, that is. 

Which Martin - gets, he does. He’s not in any hurry to see what’s actually become of the world out there. It’s bad enough hearing the howling wind and imagining it to be screams, worse still to imagine actually hearing the screaming, and it could be _anything_ out there. All Martin knows for sure is that whatever the world is out there, this world is _alive_. It’s not all corpses. He’d posited that idea and Jon had looked at him with a heartbroken look, shaken his head. If everyone is dead, there’s no fear on which to feed. 

If Martin ever meets an Entity face-to-whatever-counts-for-a-face he’s going to _deck_ it. 

He’d settle for decking Elias instead. 

He’d settle for seeing Jon smile. An actual smile, a Jon-being-teased-about-ice-cream smile, a Jon-being-shown-a-picture-of-a-good-cow smile, something that isn’t that shaky curve of his lips he attempts when he’s trying to make Martin feel better. 

The weirdest thing about the honest-to-God actual end of the world is that it feels sort of _familiar_. Martin is reminded, distressingly, of the cheerful, glazed-over smile of the nurse from Kent he used to call up to ask after his mum, the breezy little response she’d give to his careful questions - “oh, good days and bad days, Mr Blackwood”. 

Good days and bad days. Whenever someone says good days and bad days what they mean is bad days and _worse_ days. 

It’s not a perfect comparison. For one thing, Jon looks happy to see him most of the time where his mum never did. Martin had thought she might in his worse moments, wondered if her mind might go and she’d think he was his dad and actually might be out of it enough to be _happy_ about it, but - aside from that being an awful thought that he’s still privately, cringingly ashamed over - his mum stayed sharp and vituperative until the very last.

Jon is neither of those things, obviously, he’s - he’s _Jon_. He leans into his sides in the evenings and makes soft, half-teasing little comments, and wears his jumpers even though they’re far too big for him and _always_ takes the first sip of his tea when it’s too-hot and then overcompensates by leaving the rest until it’s too cold to be satisfying, and Martin loves him, he loves him so much it hurts. 

It would be easier if he were caring for him, actually, because then he’d feel useful. Even with his mum he could cook, he could clean, he could make sure she’d taken her medication (a daily conflict) and know that however much she hated him, he was _helping_. But Jon doesn’t eat, he doesn’t sleep, there’s not a pill or potion in the world that’ll make him feel better, and so all Martin can be is a distraction. 

And he tries. He fusses about things like tea because it forces Jon back to take in the tiny, granular detail of their cabin rather than the yawningly huge and echoing hellscape outside. He folds him up in his arms and tells him stories - anything he can think of - and is deliberately sparse on the details so that Jon asks questions, has to stay engaged, has to probe deeper. He tries to make a life and a home inside a world that is - as Jon has already said - anathema to comfort. 

_It is a rotten sanctuary of lonely companionship._

It’s better than it could be, anyway, in that they are both alive, and whole, in that Jon is still _Jon_ , in that they are still together. Martin feels about ready to vibrate out of his skin every time he watches Jon reach for those bloody tapes again, wants to tear his hair out and say words to the effect of _just because it’s not a razor doesn’t mean it’s not hurting you, Jon_ but that sort of conversation dredges up more questions than it does answers. 

Good days and bad days. 

Martin’s primary aim, aside from figuring out a way to turn things back towards some sort of normality, is in making sure Jon stays himself. He doesn’t know if he really gets a say in that, he just knows that every time he calls Jon’s name and sees Jon’s eyes fixed unwaveringly on the middle-distance he feels fear clenched like a fist around his heart. 

Two parts Jon slipping away from him. One part being alone again. Composite fear. 

The steam coming out of his mug is not the thick fog of the Lonely, it’s warm and damp where the Lonely is freezing. Martin pours the water down the sink, anyway, and sets the mug on the side, watching the rest of the steam dissipate into the heavy air of the cabin. 

When he opens the door of the bedroom he feels like he ought to have his shoulders squared and his chin up, gearing for a heavy conversation - what seems to happen instead is that he knocks gently as he pushes the door open, watching Jon where he’s sat cross-legged in front of the bed, a tape recorder spinning merrily in his hands, eyes wide and too-dark. 

“-two fish out of water, caught twisting on the hook of a destiny they have no control over, pilgrims to what is a place of involuntary worship-”

Martin opens his mouth to speak but finds himself interrupted by a heavy knock on the cabin door, spine snapping ramrod straight.

“ _Jon_ -” he says urgently and feels thin fingers at his wrist, Jon lacing their fingers together and holding on tightly, partly for comfort, partly to haul himself upright. 

“It’s alright. They’re not here to hurt us.” 

“They?” 

The tape-recorder is still running. Jon gives it a considering look and then picks it up, slipping it into his pocket. 

“Yes.”

“Jon.” Martin draws on his patience, squeezes Jon’s hand until his eyes flick back to him again. “Who do you mean by they?” 

“Oh.” Always that moment of surprise, Jon’s brow drawing together right before his eyes go wide, as he remembers that Martin _isn’t_ privy to an ongoing narration of what’s happening outside of the cabin. “Peter Lukas and Mike Crew.” 

Another knock at the cabin door. Jon makes as if to answer it and Martin clamps his tongue to the roof of his mouth, shakes his head firmly, holds onto Jon’s hand and digs in his heels to make him look back. He has a tangled knot of questions hooked against his sinuses and his tongue and he wonders if this is what Jon feels like when he’s taking a statement, like he _has_ to know what’s happening or his lungs might just cave in from the pressure of it all. 

Jon watches him for one long moment and then nods, reaches out to take Martin’s other hand as well, expression smoothing over. “I’m going to answer the door,” he says quietly, “and tell them to wait. I’ll explain - or, um. As best I can, anyway. And then we can decide what to do next. Is that okay?” 

Martin sucks in a trembling breath and feels the cold sting of mist at the back of his throat, rubs his thumb against the back of Jon’s hand and counts the joints there until he feels it fade. 

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” 

* * * 

It’s raining outside. That, at least, gives Martin a vindictive sort of satisfaction as he imagines raindrops running into Peter’s beard, as he sits on the bed and tries to process what Jon is telling him. 

Peter is alive, and so is Mike Crew. Two people who have done nothing to ingratiate themselves or otherwise give Martin reasons to care about them. 

“What do they _want_?” 

Jon makes a face, moves his hands in a quick, anxious way as if he can pluck the right word from the air. “Er - sanctuary? No, that’s not quite- right now, I think they want a respite.” 

“From?”

Jon waves his hand towards the window by way of a response and Martin sighs, 

“Right. I’d have thought they’d be happy to find their Entities and just- I don’t know. Do whatever it is they do.” 

Jon nods. Martin can feel static buzzing in his teeth, watches Jon’s face shift through another complicated series of emotions. “I think - well, both of them feel a little, um. Estranged. Divorced? From their respective patrons. They’re not a source of fear, as _such_ , but not really a source of comfort either.” 

“Well. Serves them right for being eldritch fear monsters,” Martin huffs. He regrets it the second the words leave his mouth and he watches Jon’s expression shutter closed, winces and reaches out for him in supplication only to have Jon shake his head. 

“No - no, you’re right. Look. I- I think they want direction.” 

“ _Directions?_ As in, what, they’re on their way to Aberdeen and got lost?” 

“As in somewhere to go next.” 

There’s only one place to go. They both know it. Martin’s trying not to _think_ about it too much, but they both know it. He scrubs a hand over his face and looks back to Jon, trying to act in some way levelly about this. 

“What do you think?” 

Jon chews over the question, winding a strand of hair around his fingertip and shifting his weight a little, rocking from side to side. 

“I think- I don’t think either of them are in a position to hurt either of us,” he says finally, “and more than that, I don’t think that they want to.” 

“Alright. That’s a start.” It doesn’t answer why they’re _here_ , it does very little to soothe the knot of uncertainty sitting at the pit of Martin’s stomach, but it’s a start. And after all, rain or not, they're still standing outside. It's only a wooden cabin, no fortress, no moat, no defences. But they're standing outside and waiting to be let in. Like vampires. Like fairytale monsters. “How do you feel about it?” 

Jon shrugs, hand settling over his pocket where the tape recorder lies. Martin can’t hear it spinning, but he’s listening for that _click_ , for the start of something happening. Jon’s fingertips tap restlessly a few times over the fabric of his trousers, lips twitching minutely as if Martin’s asked him something very, very complicated. 

Martin wonders how much Jon is aware of what he’s feeling, right now, underneath the onslaught of what everyone _else_ is feeling. 

“I want to hear what they have to say,” Jon says finally, and that’s - well, that’s not a surprise. “I want to know how it is that Peter’s still alive, I- I would like to know what it is they have planned, if anything. I think I want a second opinion.”

“Right.” 

Something about that doesn’t sit at all right with Martin, but he doesn’t have the words to express why, so it doesn’t seem worth arguing about. He nods, tracing the whorl of a floorboard with his eyes before setting his palms against his knees and pushing himself upright. “ _Right_ , then. I’ll get the door.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Martin have entered the game! Hooray! Kudos & comments etc etc you know the drill.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos & comments soothe my itching soul.
> 
> [Find me on tumblr and say hi!](https://ajcrawly.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [therefore, you and me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24926089) by [persimimmony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/persimimmony/pseuds/persimimmony)




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